"It has come as a terrible shock to Victoria and David," a friend tells PEOPLEimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/people/headlines/~4/420597626" height="1" width="1"/

I don't scare easily. It's not a machismo thing: I'm just not exactly unnerved by the monsters-in-the-closet scenarios that get recycled so often in horror-themed videogames. But Dead Space started to get to me. I played this PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC shooter wearing headphones, with the lights off and the blinds drawn. The clanking machinery and the sounds of monsters scurrying through vents set the eerie tone. But what set me off was the whispering -- barely audible, manic whispering -- that reverberated down empty hallways and corridors. br/ br/ Wired.com pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=eadYkL"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=eadYkL" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/420648033" height="1" width="1"/

h4Sorry Dave, give us a hand with this Turing Test?/h4 pPoliticians are not quite ready to pass themselves off as human: but machines are almost there. This was the shock conclusion from a Reading University competition run at the weekend designed to sort out machines from people..../p

div class="rxbodyfield"p class="ArticleBody" page="1"It's the new reality of IT: working as part of a global team, with coworker and outsourcers all over the world, coordinated by a project manager at headquarters. But that reality can be ugly, as managers are stretched across time zones, with no such thing as being off the clock. Work quality, commitment, and communications vary considerably, putting the burden on the manager caught in the middle to make it all work -- from thousands of miles away./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"For many companies, the results are bad: Thousands, sometimes millions of dollars in wasted efforts. Software and other tech projects that don't deliver as promised. Burned-out IT managers who leave if they can, and give up if they can't./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"b[ Frustrated/b bat in your IT job? Check out a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/lewis/?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU"InfoWorld Advice Line columnist Bob Lewis' sage advice/a | Looking for a change? Make sure you have a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/02/23FE-how-to-fire-IT-staff-skills-list_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU"the 30 skills every IT person should have/a. ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Unfortunately, there's no easy solution. Making global project management work requires compromises all around, compromises to which executive management are often blind and that teams in different countries see only partially, making it hard to come to a common arrangement./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"bCaught in the middle: Stories from the insidebr/ /bConsider the case of Jill (not her real name), a project manager in a global consumer products firm. She works in the United States, but the hardware and software development teams are in India, China, and Sweden. The Swedes refuse to work outside local business hours, so she has to have meetings with them between midnight and 7 a.m. in her time zone. The Indians typically give positive status reports but say nothing when they miss delivery schedules -- even when she asks directly -- so Jill can't trust what they say and has no idea what the project status really is. The Chinese often implement code strictly to specification, not raising issues when the intent of the project isn't supported by the specs. Quality suffers. They don't respond to her requests to raise such issues before completing the code./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Jill says her U.S. managers don't care about any of these issues, saying it's her problem to figure out and that all that matters is that something ships on schedule. She's still at the company, but actively looking to leave./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"At a major pharmaceutical company, Darren (also not his real name), had a similar Alice in Wonderland experience, dealing with outsourcers in India. Darren knew that something was wrong with the offshoring project on his first day on the job, when he couldn't find the on-site relationship manager. It took a whole week to locate him. The pharmaceutical company never considered the outsourcing staff to be part of the team, Darren says. So -- surprise, surprise -- the offshore team wasn't well integrated with the company's own staff, there were big communication issues, and deadlines and project goals weren't being met./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Darren got on a plane and flew to India, where he got an earful. The Indian developers were unhappy, and turnover was high. "The reason for the turnover was that we were not treating them like team members -- we weren't giving them the good work," says Darren. "We were giving them the crap work." At the same time, the Indian vendor did nothing to help create the missing process controls that were frustrating the project. "To me, the offshoring vendor was taking advantage of the situation," Darren says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Darren asked for -- and got -- a new on-site manager and a new offshore development team manager. But that didn't solve the problems on the U.S. side, and Darren was trapped by U.S. management looking to him to fix the problem but not providing the resources he needed to do it. "Nobody wanted to hear the bad news," he says. "Nobody wanted to talk about it."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"b[ After/b ba decade's experience, it's clear that offshoring is no magic answer. Learn from a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/25/35FE-outsourcing-horror-stories_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU""Painful lessons from IT outsourcing gone bad"/a to make sure you get it right. ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Darren recommended scrapping the whole deal and picking a new outsourcing vendor, one that would be a better cultural fit for the pharmaceutical company. That didn't fly. He suggested shutting down the project altogether. He recommended a cultural training day, to help the U.S. staff learn how to relate to the Indian developers and help integrate the two teams. "And I got in trouble," he says. "Nobody wanted to take ownership of the issue. Nobody gave a crap about it."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Darren -- who had about a decade's worth of experience managing outsourced teams -- quit after 10 months on the job. The pharmaceutical lost $400,000 in wasted work as a result of its problems managing the outsourcing deal./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"bHow to deal with cultural gapsbr/ /bThere's really nothing to be done but leave when company management turns a blind eye to or actively resists solutions to the problems in managing tech projects globally, as Jill's and Darren's experiences attest. But in companies that want global teams to succeed, there are some things that business and IT staff can do to help./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Americans are more apt to question each other and raise objections than many Asians are. That cultural difference easily leads to misunderstandings and failures in the delivered work -- at the core, Americans assume no news is good news and any problems would be identified as they occur; Asians consider raising objections to be disrespectful./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Paul Schmidt, managing director for global service delivery at outsourcing consultant TPI, recalls a client that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars because of such a misunderstanding. "When we did the root cause analysis, it revolved around the issue of communication. The client was unable to communicate their requirements to the vendor, and the vendor, who happened to be Indian, [was from a] culture not to raise questions and problems, but to bury them."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"The U.S. client didn't understand Indian culture enough to probe more deeply. "'Yes' really means that I heard you, not that I agree with you or that I understand," Schmidt says. The Indian provider also didn't adjust to the American culture it was serving, letting that disconnect remain and, thus, allowing the project to fail./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"One way to deal with cultural differences is to set up a system of checks and controls from the very start, Darren recommends. This may appear to be bureaucracy to Americans, but it gives Asians and others taught not to criticize others publicly the environment they need to raise issues./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"b[ Think/b bit's time to go the startup route? Find out a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/08/Get-a-job-at-a-hot-startup_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU"how to get hired at a hot startup/a or a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/08/37FE-startup-tech-how-to_1.html" class="regularArticleU"start your own high-tech business/a. ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Another option is to do business with more compatible cultures. Albert Lee, executive director of IT at New York Media, the publisher of New York magazine, had a similar disconnect with Indian developers in the past. "If it's not in the spec, it's not going to be built, and they're not going to question why it's not going to be built," he says. So Lee now hires developers in Russia and Eastern Europe, where the culture, especially the ability to get "push back" from developers, was closer to what he was used to in the United States./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3""They want to be a lot more engaged than the past experiences I've had with other outsourcing firms, and they're not afraid to say no if they see something they disagree with," he says. "They can say, 'You can do something more efficiently. Have you considered this model?' It makes them fit in more as a member of our company," Lee says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Of course, the intensity of such feedback by some Russians can be a little shocking to Americans not expecting it, says Alexander Nepomnyatshi, an engagement manager for outsourcing firm Luxsoft. "For example, they might be offering help -- by criticizing your decision," he says. "They're using to solving problems, and sometimes they go looking for problems." Russians can also be a little terser than their American colleagues, he says, assuming that their audience fully understands the background and the details of the issue./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"bHow to bridge the long-distance gapsbr/ /bEven when cultures are more compatible, differences can affect work quality -- even if only because the people can't casually interact and establish a shared vision. That means project members need to spend time together live in person./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3""When you have face-to-face meetings, you have body language, you can ask again if you don't hear clearly," says Luxsoft's Nepomnyatshi. "With e-mail, you can't transfer emotions, and a lot can be lost. E-mail is the worst-case scenario. Telephone is better, but still not as efficient as face-to-face. Videoconferencing -- we have all that. It really helps to eliminate some of these issues, but not completely. People need to see each other to develop trust, to work as a team."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="4"Thus, travel is critical, says Jeff Burk, CTO of document scanning software company Neat. He travels periodically to visit his prime outsourcing vendor, Symphony Service, in India and China. Burk also plans to bring programmers from Beijing to Neat's headquarters in Philadelphia "to give them a chance to participate in what we do here."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="4"It's important to give the Beijing team a sense of belonging to the company, he says. "Especially when you start off the effort, it's critically important to have some meals together, get to know each other -- it builds some affinity for the company and sets the relationship on the right course," Burk says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="4"b[ Contemplating/b ba move overseas to boost your career where the tech action is hot? Find out how in InfoWorld's special report a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/08/41FE-tech-jobs-overseas_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU""For a promising IT career, go east, young techie."/a ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="4"Golden Living, a health care company in Arkansas, brought Indian developers to its headquarters for three-month stints to work with in-house staff. "I wanted them to have the opportunity to come and work with us on site, and it gave them the firsthand ability to see what we're doing here, then turn around and go home to India and share that with the team," says Randy Cates, the company's vice president of IT./pp class="ArticleBody" page="4"At Schneider Electric, offshore developers come for a six-month stay to the company's North Carolina headquarters. "They absorb not just the job, but the cultural aspects," says IT director Wendy Douglas. But the acculturation happens both ways: The U.S. team members also go to India for three-month stays to work with the team there./pp class="ArticleBody" page="4"The culture shock was usually bigger for the Americans, Douglas says. "The folks from offshore who came onshore seemed to have been prepared for what to expect in the U.S.," she says. "But as far as the onshore folks going offshore, we were much less prepared for what we would see."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="4"Schneider was also not as prepared to help its Indian visitors, Douglas recalls. The Indian hosts would take much more care with their American guests, meeting them at the airport and scheduling activities for their entire stay. By contrast, the American side let their visitors fend mostly for themselves. "We felt like such clods," she says. "We never even thought that somebody would need help getting from the airport. So we've tried to do a better job."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="5"bHow not to work 24 hours a day to keep up with time zonesbr/ /bOf course, you can travel only so much, so the bulk of team interactions will happen via the phone, e-mail, instant messaging, and videoconferences. For those live communications -- phone, instant messaging, and videoconferencing -- the issue of time zones has to be considered, unless you're happy working 24 hours a day./pp class="ArticleBody" page="5"Where possible, everyone needs to adjust their work schedules to accommodate time zone differences. The trick is to shift people's hours, not just extend them./pp class="ArticleBody" page="5"For example, it's not uncommon for U.S. managers to go online in the evenings to check e-mail. But "if you're working with a team that's 10 or 11 hours ahead of you, for them it will be the early hours of the morning, so it might be easier to start earlier the next morning instead," advises Robert Ingram, human resources director for the consultancy Capgemini./pp class="ArticleBody" page="5"Neat's Burk said that his team handles the issue of working nontraditional hours by alternating when the U.S. team works late and when the China team works early. "We try to flip the hours around a little bit, so only once or twice a week you're having to do something with the schedule [of your team]," he says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="5"But things can get sticky when people can't adjust their schedules. For example, in many countries, staffers rely on public transport or company-provided buses and taxis to get home. The issue is particularly acute in developing countries, where transit options are fewer: If schedules change at the last minute, managers in India or China might have to scramble to find new transportation, notes Ingram. "We might have to make special arrangements -- a second set of buses or a set of taxis -- to take people home."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="5"For cultures that prize a separation for work and home life -- such as in many European countries -- the scheduling issue can't be handled through alternative commute options. If employees in those countries are unwilling to join teleconferences or check e-mail from home before or after work hours to accommodate coworkers in North America or Asia, perhaps they shouldn't be part of global teams./pp class="ArticleBody" page="5"iLemuel/i iV. Cacho contributed to this report./i/p/div

The shock of the effective nationalisation of Scotland's two biggest banks — HBOS and RBS — left business executives stunned and struggling to see how its financial services industry would recover.

pFriday's shock selloff by Sumner Redstone had Viacom's stock reeling, but company CEO Philippe Dauman remained confident about the outlook for his company, he said at the a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i677aeab462cd125f3469e638c301f41f" title="Mipcom keynote"Mipcom keynote/a today. Late last week Redstone announced a $233 million in CBS and Viacom stock by his National Amusements company..Dauman said that he had talked to Redstone before the news was announced. /p p "We talked very easily—it wasn't one of his happiest days...Everyone knows he loves these stocks, but he's fundamentally very pragmatic and used to dealing with adversity, that is one of his strengths." He said that there is "no one on the planet you'd rather have by your side in a crisis." /p p Dauman also said, picked a href="http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117993890.html?categoryid=14cs=1" title="up by Variety"up by Variety/a, that as Viacom depends on advertising for only a third of its revenue, the bdownturn would not hit the company as hard as it will other media congloms/b. Its growing investment in consumer products, live events and vidgaming would also soften the blow, he said. /p p /p piEconWomen, Oct. 29, 2008 | Edison Ballroom | New York City Our panels are jam-packed with top women’s media executives. Register: a href="http://econwomen-RSS.eventbrite.com"http://econwomen.eventbrite.com/a/i/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=FwNyrM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=FwNyrM" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=mYQHM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=mYQHM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=LM2zM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=LM2zM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=L5Vym"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=L5Vym" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=SpvmM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=SpvmM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=1SoeM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=1SoeM" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/419905443" height="1" width="1"/

I just saw it, it's the Storm, face-down on a table, with some voice over talking about the first touch screen Blackberry. Then, a hand grabs the phone and goes to flip it over and the screen goes black just before you see what it looks like and then it says Blackberry Storm, Verizon, blah blah.

They're really going for shock value with this thing, when they probably don't need to, its a nice looking phone and they're marketing to their own customers anyway. Customers who are going to eat it up because its going to be better than the crap "touch screens" Verizon already has.

I actually laughed out loud when I saw the commercial and they didn't show you what it looked like.

I’m from Barcelona’s first album was called Let Me Introduce My Friends; the follow-up could be titled Let Me Introduce My Melancholy Friends. If the debut was giddy, innocent, and lighter than air, Who Killed Harry Houdini? is glum, confused, and troubled. Instead of songs about stamp collecting and the joys of making music, you get “Music Almost Killed Me” and “Ophelia,” which has the telling lyric “He didn’t believe in anything/He didn’t believe in joy.” Instead of cheerful songs about oversleeping and chicken pox, heavy stuff like death and ghosts and tears dominate the lyrics. The band’s leader, Emanuel Lundgren, has either had some rough times since the first album or is a very good actor, as the songs reflect a tortured soul. All throughout the record there’s an overcast and moody feel that even the poppiest, peppiest song, “Paper Planes,” can’t break through the gloom (and it doesn’t help that the song is about the dehumanizing effects of city living). Just knowing that the album isn’t the pure blast of sunshine that the debut was might be enough to turn off the group’s fans in dispirited droves.

Hopefully that won’t happen, because it turns out that the band does melancholy quite well, using dynamics and pacing to keep things from getting too gloomy and giving the most depressed songs the liveliest backing — the rocked-out “Houdini” or the hooky-as-anything-on-the-first-album “Mingus,” for example. And there is some hope among the teardrops and sighs, like “Mingus”‘ rallying cry “In my heart still a kid” or a song about the power of music to free you from your troubles for a while (”Headphones”). It helps too that Lundgren’s producing and arranging skills have grown; the production is clearer and the arrangements show a lighter touch. He doesn’t call in the vocal choruses on every song, and instead picks their spots carefully. The instrumentation is also more restrained; there are large stretches of sparseness within the songs, fitting the somber mood of the lyrics perfectly. It’s still a unique sound when the whole band gets together and makes a lovely racket (as on “Rufus” or the very Phil Spector-ish “Andy”), but the gimmick of the huge band can’t hide the fact that there is some real stuff going on behind the scenes. All the emotion and soulful melancholy on display is a shock, and it may take a few spins to get past the feeling that the band is just too different, too gloomy to be enjoyed any longer. But if you stick with Who Killed Harry Houdini? and let it sink in, the quiet beauty of the songs and performances will make your efforts worthwhile.

Ethan Persoff, the comics archivist who collects weird and disturbing ephemera from all our yesteryears, says: In June we'd made the claim to displaying the oldest known piece of John McCain memorabilia, the 1934 Obliging Lady Tijuana Bible. Retraction: It's now come to our shock and surprise that an older item exists. Fortunately we were able to find a copy and have scanned it in for your historic investigation. Presenting the 1929 "MY FELLOW PRISONERS" John McCain Song Sheet. Many were taken slightly aback by McCain's utterance of the 'my fellow prisoners' gaff during a campaign rally last week. But that's because they aren't aware of his 80 year history with the phrase. Here we offer a brief report, including an interview with McCain himself And here is a direct link to large scans of the 5-page item in question. Endorsed and Approved by The Republican National Committee, copyright 1929 M. Witmark amp; Sons. Lyrics and Music by John S. McCain....br style="clear: both;"/gt; img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=1b5e453b856a0ba40a944932dbd720f5" height="1" width="1"/gt; img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=1b5e453b856a0ba40a944932dbd720f5" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/gt;

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/action/" rel="tag"Action/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.ausgamers.com/videos/view.php/39388"img hspace="0" border="1" vspace="4" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/looselips.jpg" alt="" //abr //div Here's a great object lesson in why PR people get so nervous about letting the talent do interviews: While a href="http://www.ausgamers.com/videos/view.php/39388"speaking with AusGamers/a, emPrince of Persia/em animation director David Wilkinson was heaping praise on Alex Drouin, who worked on animations for emPrince of Persia: The Sands of Time/em, as well as mega-hit ema href="http://www.joystiq.com/search/?q=Assassin%27s%20Creed"Assassin's Creed/a/em. When asked what Drouin is up to now at about 14:28 in, Wilkinson said "He's busy making Altair even more beautiful. Last thing I saw him do was getting Altair to swim."br /br /This off-handed comment seems to suggest (1) New emAssassin's Creed/em game is in the works (shock). (2) It will at least be partially focused on Altair. (3) He will swim, which, considering his bulky cloth duds, could be the most surprising part of all. br /br /[Via a href="http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/2008/10/13/second-assassins-creed-game-kind-of-confirmed/"TVB/a]p style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.ausgamers.com/videos/view.php/39388Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/13/altair-learns-to-swim-for-future-project/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1340657/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=amp;fc=1amp;url=http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/13/altair-learns-to-swim-for-future-project/" title="Linking Blogs"Linkingnbsp;Blogs/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/13/altair-learns-to-swim-for-future-project/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=UtH7m"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=UtH7m" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=Ez9cm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=Ez9cm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/419681641" height="1" width="1"/

Peter Mandelson has taken his seat in the House of Lords after his shock appointment to the Cabinet.

Auteur : ITN
Tags : peter mandelson business secretary mandy house of lords parliament westminster whitehall government lords baron
Envoyé : 13 octobre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

An interview with Pam McVitie, the new editor of the Daily Sport. That means there are now three women editing titles which rely on scantily clad female content: McVitie, the Sun's Rebekah Wade and the Daily Star's Dawn Neesom.img width='1' height='1' src='http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/367/f/5716/s/21c127d/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Independent.co.uk: Interview with the female editor of the Daily Sportlink=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/shock-woman-editor-lands-on-planet-daily-sport-959166.html" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Independent.co.uk: Interview with the female editor of the Daily Sportlink=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/shock-woman-editor-lands-on-planet-daily-sport-959166.html" 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/21291182349/f/5716/c/367/s/35394173/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/21291182349/f/5716/c/367/s/35394173/a2.img" border="0"//a

pImproving on their debut EP emOur Way Is Revenge/em, the first full-length from this Brooklyn band with goth inclinations cuts back on the gimmicks and showcases a formidable range of songwriting styles and moods.nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/145524" target="_blank"read more/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/DAR3GmJoQH5yjpM0HPU25IpUoQ4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/DAR3GmJoQH5yjpM0HPU25IpUoQ4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/reviews/~4/X1NFn5nwVpI" height="1" width="1"/

pImproving on their debut EP emOur Way Is Revenge/em, the first full-length from this Brooklyn band with goth inclinations cuts back on the gimmicks and showcases a formidable range of songwriting styles and moods.nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/145524" target="_blank"read more/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/C1KutTfjRle08WEdimZelNH6KiI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/C1KutTfjRle08WEdimZelNH6KiI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/X1NFn5nwVpI" height="1" width="1"/

People who overconsumed during the past decade are now rejecting extravagant lifestyles. They're spending less, and more wisely. Some are getting their finances in order. Others are fearful of losing their jobs, shocked by investment losses, or hunkering down amid the general uncertainty. nbsp; nbsp; The penny-pinching is already showing up in the numbers; this quarter could mark the first fall in personal consumption in 17 years. And with credit tight and Americans loaded down with $2.6 trillion in personal debt, consumer borrowing dropped in August, the first such contraction since 1991. Menzie D. Chinn, who teaches economics at the University of Wisconsin, figures consumers won't be in a position to spend freely for five years. nbsp; nbsp; Which brings us to what John Maynard Keynes called the paradox of thrift. What's good for the individual, argued the famous economist, can ignite or deepen a recession. nbsp; nbsp; Thrift has gone in and out of style since the founding of the republic. In the McGuffey Reader of the 19th century, Benjamin Franklin was held up as a paragon of virtue for his frugal ways. Later, people who lived through the Great Depression were in some cases marked for life by the experience. Typical of them is Bernard Handel, an 82-year-old resident of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., who grew up poor in the Bronx. In the early 1930s, his father's grocery store failed and his dad couldn't find another job for several years. To this day, even though Handel became very wealthy, he shops for food with coupons, drives a Honda, and takes the subway rather than taxis. I just don't believe in throwing money away, he says. nbsp; nbsp; Handel's baby-boomer children grew up without psychological scars from the Depression. And the boomers' children have come of age in an era of abundance, easy credit, and a taste for luxury. So it's no wonder that the sudden need for thrift comes as an upsetting shock for many. Some are calling for a massive public education effort on the level of the anti-drunk-driving and anti-smoking campaigns that have been so successful. We want to build a culture that's more hospitable to thrift, so it's not seen as odd but fostered and nudged along, says Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-author of For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture, a new report from The Institute for American Values, a think tank.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hirings-firings/" rel="tag"Hirings/Firings/Layoffs/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/daimlerchrysler/" rel="tag"Daimler/a/pa href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/09/news/international/daimler_jobs.ap/index.htm"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/daimleragstar_opt.jpg" //abr /br /The automotive industry is reeling under serious a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/08/01/gm-loses-15-5b-in-q2/"financial woes/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/06/merry-christmas-envoy-trailblazer-9-7x-plant-closing-dec-23r/"plant closings/a and a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/08/volvo-to-cut-4-000-jobs-worldwide/"/aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/08/volvo-to-cut-4-000-jobs-worldwide/"j/aob cuts, so news that Daimler AG will be adding 1,000 new people to its payroll next year comes as a bit of a shock. The new jobs will be added globally, with 500 positions going to Daimler's headquarters in Stuttgart, and the rest being distributed around the world. These new positions will reportedly train the automaker's next generation of workers, which are entering the industry at a time when expertise in complex developing technologies are essential for survival. Even with the added jobs, Daimler can't cut any positions until 2012 because of an agreement already in place with its employees. Just like every other automaker, it's hoping to weather the rough time in between by focusing on efficiencies and flexibility wherever possible. So that's one piece of good automotive news, now let's get to work on those a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/09/gm-and-ford-beaten-up-on-wall-st-today/"stock prices/a.br /br /[Source: a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/09/news/international/daimler_jobs.ap/index.htm"CNN Money/a]h6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/09/news/international/daimler_jobs.ap/index.htmRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/12/what-recession-daimler-adding-1-000-to-payroll-next-year/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1338644/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/12/what-recession-daimler-adding-1-000-to-payroll-next-year/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~a/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=M8olrL"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~a/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=M8olrL" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=RGWwm"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=RGWwm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=qPrkm"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=qPrkm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/418980414" height="1" width="1"/

pShouldn't come as too much of a shock, but Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel-- a guy who values his privacy and doesn't often appear onstage-- joined his old friends on the "a href="/article/news/145168-elephant-6-crew-to-embark-on-holiday-surprise-tour"strongElephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour/strong/a" for their stop last night at New York's Knitting Factory. The video and sound are a bit hard to make out, but it looks as though that's him on the right in the flannel shirt shouting along through Olivia Tremor Control's terrific "The Opera House" (there's no missing Mangum's former bandmate, the bearded Scott Spillane, anyway). He's also there at the tail end of "I Have Been Floated", a song from OTC's emBlack Foliage/em, and joins in on Elf Power's "The Arrow Flies Close". He didn't do any of his own songs, apparently, but nice to see everyone up there partying like it's, well, 1999. (Big thanks to Brian at the a href="http://thedailycrosshatch.com/" target="_blank"strongDaily Cross Hatch/strong/a for the tip and video)./p pstrong"The Opera House"br //strong object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/i5fIDW0HXh0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/i5fIDW0HXh0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /object /p pstrong"I Have Been Floated"br //strong object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/H4pcTtT2SXIamp;hl=enamp;fs=1" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/H4pcTtT2SXIamp;hl=enamp;fs=1" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /object /p pstrong"The Arrow Flies Close"br //strong object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nCDTjFhwVp0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nCDTjFhwVp0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /object /p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Ta9XdSvTRKFm6SZbS6X5t_Dydmo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Ta9XdSvTRKFm6SZbS6X5t_Dydmo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/itDO4IueQ0A" height="1" width="1"/

To an old-school horror fanatic, this is pretty big news. To the rest of you, it's a bunch of babble with the word "cannibals" tossed in near the end. But remember a few weeks back when we talked about how Jack Ketchum's Offspring was about to become a movie, despite the fact that the novel was actually Part 2 to a novel called Off Season? I not-so-cleverly assumed that the rights to Off Season belonged to someone else, and also that Offspring could easily stand as a non-sequel story.

Apparently those Off Season rights did reside elsewhere, because Shock announces that not only is Off Season going to become a movie, but also that Eric Red will be directing it. Genre fans will know Mr. Red's name from films like The Hitcher, Near Dark, Body Parts, Bad Moon, and the upcoming 100 Feet, but apparently he and Jack are old pals, so the project makes sense to me. (No word on if / how the Offspring movie will relate to the Off Season film, but who knows when the flicks will even be finished?)

Off Season still ranks as my favorite among Mr. Ketchum's books. It's a full-bore survival horror tale that was inspired by "the Sawney Bean legend and horror/siege flicks such as The Hills Have Eyes and Assault on Precinct 13." And yes, it deals with cannibals. We'll assume that Red will also be on adaptation duty, but it's probably a little too early in the process to worry about such things. In the meantime, go read Off Season. And then Offspring.

Filed under: Horror

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