McKesson is a global health care leader that has 26 operating companies. The centrial IT group had the vision to automate "the last mile" of IT planning, the budget approval process. We think of it as the budget approval dance, and when containing costs, it's a ritual that can leave scars. This company has evolved to the point of improving the cost of budgeting, and making it faster and smarter by understanding the assets, services, and service delivery of IT.

Budgeting can be painful because it can be in slow-motion. Contrast this with the real-time controls of such as VMware V-Motion and Amazon's web service console and we see a great linkup for driving process change through budgeting. And driving budgeting by cloud and virtualization. We took a look at McKesson's journey and the service catalog functions of NewScale, an IT services catalog company.

Sponsor

McKesson: Let's Start with Less Meetings and Less 5mb Spreadsheets

NewScale has customers like McKesson and Charles Schwab and competitors like HP, IBM, Tivoli. The company has been growing its customer base and helping stable-state enterprises to leverage Service Management. And that leads directly into cloud procurement.

We tracked the use case at McKesson, where the company landed at the service desk in the cloud as a means to the end in their journey to build a low-impact budget process.

We see a lot of benefit in this approach, where if successful, it would mean that the advantages to go with commodity pre-approved services dramatically improves the timing and effort of procurement. This is a lever that gives Finance a significant hand in the IT spend. Since cloud and virtualization offerings can be spun-up with service call, the cloud is well positioned to be there as budgeting and approval processes are automated.

In phase one, the company reported significant progress in moving processes towards the service catalog.

One click vs. Fill Out the Form

In the end, the move towards enterprise standards may be won over simplicity. Is it less clicks to provision. This means connecting the dots between processes, systems, software, teams, and policy.

To EC2, or to EC2 through Official Channels: That is the Question

IT services management comes into the picture and could make a difference in how the business and technical contributors of organizations are rewarded for moving to a standard platform.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library is tool set that has been given to IT managers to try to wrap standard language around IT service management. It gives the enterprise a common way to manage processes for IT and track the changes involved in building and operating systems.

Services platforms like Amazon and Salesforce can be considered IT disinter-mediation. We all know a IT leader out there somewhere who is funding their project by credit card out in the cloud. IT, of course, knows this also (especially since they are likely watching your network traffic). One part of the service management offering is making it even easier than Amazon. Carrot, vs. stick.

Service catalog management has the promise when it wraps things like Amazon's EC2, or VMwares offerings, gives the enterprise a way to get the same service from the web. And, with budget approval and IT approval baked in, the carrot is there.

All of IT moves towards transparency and IT processes as being measured as processes. In the ITIL community, there is discussion of the next layer of the library moving towards service delivery in the move towards ITIL Version 3. It's easy to see that "provision server" becomes fully automated. Soon, all the IT functions below it become invisible. We see this as a future cloud inflection point, where instead of there "cloud services", we are all in one.

Zen Mashup

What has been your experience in mashing ITIL, ITIL Service Delivery in your environment? Do your IT services flow like water?

Discuss

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

He writes:

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

Investing in propaganda...

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

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

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

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

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

- - -

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

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

We're reprinting this review from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival to coincide with The Runaways theatrical release this weekend.

By: Kevin Kelly

I'll be blunt about this: I really wasn't looking forward to this movie. I'm not the biggest fan of lip-chewing, hair-twirling Kristen Stewart, or the wide-eyed, blank face expert Dakota Fanning. I love rock and roll (so put another dime in the jukebox, baby) as much as the next person, but these two starring in a movie about an all-girl, teen sensation, flash in the pan band from the 1970s? I just didn't think they could pull it off. Hey, at least I'm big enough to admit I was wrong. The Runaways rocked the Joan Jett / Cherie Currie backstory's pants off (literally), and I'll be buying the soundtrack, which features K-Stew and D-Fan singing the blasts from the past.

However, this movie really should have been called The Joan Jett & Cherie Currie Show, because the other Runaways are hardly featured in this movie at all. Sandy West (who co-founded the band with Joan Jett), and Lita Ford's stories aren't given much attention in the film, and Ford seems to exist just to cause drama. Additionally, The Runaways had six different bass players during their short four-year history (including Micki Steele who went on to The Bangles) so the filmmakers decided to create a fictional girl named Robin Robins. She's played by Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development fame, and she unfortunately gets only one or two lines.

Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews

Continue reading Review: The Runaways

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Kudos to Comcast for embracing the year 2009. The nation’s largest—and quite possibly worst—ISP has finally committed itself to deploying 100 mbps broadband beginning this year. That will make the FCC happy, what with the loft goals it set with its National Broadband Plan. It’s also good news for people who know their way around things like Usenet—taps nose like a spy. Will it be affordable, though?

The big rollout will happen within the next 12 to 18 months. Most, if not all, of Comcast’s customers will be able to sign up for the super-fast service. You can thank DOCSIS 3.0 for that.

Price may be an issue. Right now, Comcast offers 100 mbps down/15 mbps up service to business customers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for $369 per month. There’s no way you’re going to convince residential customers in this economy to shell out nearly $400 a month for Internet access, no matter how fast—that’s the price of two car payments. Now you’d have to figure that not even Comcast would be that silly to charge that kind of money for residential Internet access. I don’t know what’s involved with business-level Internet access at Comcast, but presumably it comes with free ostrich egg omelets once a week.

For comparison’s sake, I already have 100 mbps Internet access from Cablevision, an ISP in the New York area. For $100 per month I get 101 (!) mbps down/15 mbps up. I am, in fact, able to max out my connection when using Usenet (I have Newsdemon). But a fair warning to people who think the Internet is magically going to fly once they hop aboard the 100 mbps train: it won’t. Sites like YouTube are still dog-slow, Gmail isn’t any faster than it is using your regular broadband connection. In a sense, you’re faster than what these sites can handle. That will change over time, of course, but don’t think getting 100 mbps is going to change your life if all you do is check your Facebook and watch the occasional YouTube clip.

It’s sorta weird: sites won’t upgrade their capacity until there’s enough people with super-fast connections to make it worth their while, and it may not be worth it to the average person to upgrade, and perhaps pay $100 per month, until it’s worth their while.

Alex Seitz-Wald / Think Progress:
Rep. Steve King and Glenn Beck agree: Voting for health reform on Sunday is ‘an affront to God.’  —  With this morning's release of the Congressional Budget Office's reconciliation package score, the House appears ready to vote on health care reform this Sunday.

Not so long ago, calling something “Web 2.0″ increased its value. It meant fresh, new, interactive, responsive. Now, if someone uses that term you know they’re woefully out of touch.

For me, it’s been a trip to re-adopt my former web beat on GigaOM after spending a few years writing for our sister site NewTeeVee. I made the leap to the world of web video in the fall of 2006, when YouTube had just been bought, Facebook had just opened to the general public, and only a few people cared about a little service called Twittr.

Since then, one thing that’s gone by the wayside is the term “Web 2.0,” which got its start as a marketing phrase to build a conference around, and spawned both a new class of companies and sites dedicated to writing about them, such as TechCrunch and Mashable. TechCrunch, whose original tagline was “tracking Web 2.0,” itself declared the death of the term in February 2009, citing a perceived drop in the number of pitches mentioning it. Indeed, while the AJAX-y web services and user-generated content at the core of Web 2.0 haven’t gone anywhere, now the preferred term seems to be “social media.” Google Trends says that search volume for “social media” surpassed “Web 2.0″ right in the middle of January this year, though the new hotness has yet to reach the heights of “Web 2.0″ circa 2007.

Feel free to chalk it up to a matter of trendy semantics, but here are the material differences I see between these two mini-eras:

Building for the Mainstream

These days, starry-eyed entrepreneurs are building for the mainstream, not just for themselves. One of the reasons I was happy to leave the GigaOM Web 2.0 beat the first time around was that I didn’t want to write about yet another social bookmarking service trying to copy the innovative but narrowly used Delicious (then spelled del.icio.us, which kind of says it all). Sure, one of the best ways to come up with something truly useful is to build something you yourself want, like a repository for saving all the web sites you visit — and as Twitter has proven, niche products can evolve to satisfy the needs of those beyond just early adopters. But some of the most exciting new services online today are aimed at serving broader interests, such as the search for deals (Groupon, Gilt Groupe), and procuring real physical products and human services (Alice.com, Sears’ ServiceLive).

I think MySpace and Facebook deserve a lot of credit for bringing the Web 2.0 era to the mainstream, helped along by major portal offerings like Gmail. Those services and products continue to provide value to a broad audience. On the flip side, startups like Foursquare and the many folks who pitch us on, say, tweaks to Google Reader aren’t building with Middle America in mind. They may get there eventually, but not just yet.

All the World’s a Platform

The rise of platforms, app stores and mobile makes web applications better, more accessible and more useful. Facebook, with its platform launch in 2007, showed the value (and eventually, the dangers) of building on top of someone else’s pre-existing audience, making use of inherent viral channels and the continuity of experience provided by a popular platform. The distribution power of the platform was huge.

Then the iPhone App Store came along, offering far more functionality and exposure to developers (if they could get through its approval process). On the user side, just about every web app is better when it rides along in your pocket, ready when you need it. The iPhone and all the knock-offs and competitive one-ups it has inspired are tremendously popular. And as a corollary, the benefits of the mobile app platform model is now so obvious that the number of them grew to 38 from eight in the span of 2009 alone, according to new research.

The Most Obvious Answer

Of course, the one thing that affected every business, web or otherwise, was the economic downturn. However, Web 2.0 startups — until of course their funding ran out and/or they had to layoff employees — seemed woefully out of touch with the rest of the world.

Valleywag, which never missed a chance to declare something dead, might have actually been right when in it ran with the headline “It’s the end of Web 2.0 as we know it” in reference to a carefree music video released by Web 2.0 entrepreneurs cavorting in Cyprus to the tune of Journey. It was October 2009. Their timing was pretty bad.

Meanwhile, one of the sectors hit hardest by the downturn was the media, which was already being brought to its knees by its failure to adapt to the web. Now, your Facebook newsfeed really is your hometown paper (though its investigative reporting skills may be limited to relationship status changes), and Twitter really is your personal real-time newswire. And accordingly, social media referrals from sites like Digg and Twitter are increasingly important to media business models — and sites like Facebook and YouTube are among the most-trafficked, and therefore most powerful, on the web.

Maybe “social media” just sounds less like a buzzword or a brand name than “Web 2.0,” while at the same time pointing to a sort of social facelift for all content — a feature that can be included or integrated into everything on the web, rather than being segmented in its own category. Or perhaps it was the futile attempts to brand disparate things “Web 3.0” that made people realize how silly the naming convention was. But “social media” has its issues, too. As Aliza argued earlier this month on WebWorkerDaily, many new web tools are just useful, not necessarily social. Perhaps what was wrong with “Web 2.0″ was that the term implied a fixed version — while it’s cute, the metaphor of a software upgrade doesn’t carry over very well in reference to something that changes every day. Innovation on the web is fluid and builds on itself, and that naming convention just got stale.

Middle photo and post thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user chegs.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my bio.

[In this opinion piece, Game Developer EIC Brandon Sheffield takes Electronic Arts and Visceral to task for their competition asking fans to "design a kill" for Dead Space, calling it "incredibly regressive for our industry."]

Here we are in an era of video games coming under intense scrutiny for their violence, and for any hint of sexuality. This is an era in which the Australian and German governments are rejecting the sale of certain games by the handful, Venezuela has banned all “violent” video games with sweeping terms, and psychologists study the effects of violent games on behavior around the clock.

It’s in this climate that EA has chosen to launch its Design a Kill for Dead Space 2 contest, which to me runs second only to Acclaim’s attempt to buy ad space on tombstones in terms of irresponsibility.

Here’s the text from the press release, describing the contest:

"Have you ever played a video game and thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool if...’ Well, Visceral Games announced that fans of the critically-acclaimed Dead Space franchise can make their “what if” dreams a reality. This is their chance to design a kill and get it in the game. Players can submit ideas via text, video or still images.

Since the contest began last week, there are over 1,000 entries already, so the cooler the kill, the better chance it has of winning a place in the upcoming Dead Space 2 video game. To prove to the Visceral development team that they have the right stuff, players have to demonstrate Isaac Clarke defeating or dismembering various Necromorphs including the Slasher, Lurker, or Leaper using their own signature kill.

The grand prize winner will not only have an opportunity to have their dismemberment move recreated in the game but they’ll also win the opportunity to have their likeness modeled onto a non-player character in the game."

Where To Draw The Line?

I don’t believe we should shy away from violence in games – violence is a part of life, and can make for very interesting scenarios in games. And it’s no secret that a large majority of fun video games are based on conflict, much of which is combative. But I also believe that asking fans to think as hard as they can about an innovative way to kill someone is a very regressive thing for our industry.

Just think for a second about what EA is actually asking people to do. Yes, this is what many of us do every day – there are those of us who design combat and combat scenarios for a living. But asking fans to do it is just too much.

First, it’s acknowledging that games can inspire fans to think of ways to kill. Second, through promotion, the contest is saying this is a good thing to do, or that it would be fun, posing ‘wouldn’t it be cool if...’

Third, it’s implied that this is a proper way to enter the industry (that’s part of the implication, that this design will be your foot in the door). That really hammers home the misconception that all we do is think of ways for things to kill each other.

Fourth, it asks for documented evidence of this fan violence. EA must certainly have plenty at this point, with over 1,000 submissions, which anyone will be able to view once the competition is over at the official Facebook page.

Fuel For The Fire

Many in the mainstream media, parent-advocate groups, and in the public opinion at large consider the game-playing population to be mostly children. And for better or for worse, it’s likely that a number of children have in fact played the M-rated Dead Space. This kind of contest is amazing fodder for the groups that want to limit and restrict games, and it’s hard to believe EA or Visceral would not be aware of this.

If they are not aware of the regressive nature of this competition, as the video on the official page seems to suggest, that is incredibly unconscious, and certainly indicative of the immaturity of our industry. This seems like the sort of thing you should really think through. Perhaps we’re all so desensitized to violence in this industry that they did not think about it in this light.

If the intention is to get the contest to stir up controversy, well I suppose they may achieve their goal. If the mainstream media does get wind of the competition, and they get hold of even one video of a kid doing a “brutal kill” on his brother, the shitstorm begins. I do not think the results of this storm will be positive for anyone.

Little To Smile About

One of the images that accompanies the press release (above) shows a sample entry from an actual fan, in which all the descriptions of actions are accompanied by smiley faces, such as "knee in the head ^^." This description comes after the one that says "grabs the head and shoot in the neck."

You could argue that since the creatures you kill are not human, this is not so bad. I would disagree. They are humanoid enough, and asking fans to figure out a way to kill anything is enough to cause a horrified gut reaction in any parent or politician that may see it. A company as large as EA cannot simply make the “games are just fun” excuse. I do not believe this is an overreaction. I believe the reaction from those outside the game industry would be magnitudes above what I write here.

You could argue I’m bringing more attention to this contest by mentioning it here, and you’d be right. I think we have to take these things to task when we see them, and I can only hope that if an intrepid journalist is researching this “brutal kill” phenomenon they might see this article and pause before decrying the entire industry as actively breeding violence in its players.

Know that the assumptions and drives of one marketing campaign do not reflect the majority. There are those among us who recognize that this is regressive, and I would caution any game company against taking this sort of action in the future.

You’ve probably heard about some quantum this-and-that where it was implied that certain particles can be here and there, or moving and not moving, simultaneously. “Splendid,” you said, disparagingly, as you adjusted your monocle, “that also explains my quantum state of simultaneously reading and not caring.” Oh, sir! How droll that was! You slay me. But you spoke the truth: on a practical level, who cares about a muon or something not being pin-downable on a scale so small that we have to build monstrous facilities just to observe?

Well, some scientists felt the same way, so they decided to implement quantum weirdness on a scale visible to the human eye: a “quantum drum” that they supercooled and then somehow both vibrated and did not vibrate. So…what did it look like? I don’t know, they don’t really say! What the hell, right?

It turns out that even at a (technically) visible level, in this case about 30 micrometers, an object in a state of quantum suspension can’t really be observed, per se. I think the amount of light it would take for us to see it would totally mess up the experiment. So the researchers had to trust their instruments. I know – these scientists and their instruments.

[via Reddit]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One panel of awesome:

Oh, Hulk, no one understands you!

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

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

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

One panel of awesome:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One panel of awesome:

I love Wolverine's expression!

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

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

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

One panel of awesome:

So portentous!!!!!

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

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

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

One panel of awesome:

Jeff Parker + Felix Ruiz = awesome!

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

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

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

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

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

One panel of "awesome":

Really?

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

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

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

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

Filed under: Google, Browsers, Op-Ed

Lovers of privacy and of "not doing evil", rejoice!

The Google Analytics team just announced they are working on a browser-based opt-out mechanism. In simple terms, this means that a user could install an add-on or a plug-in and simply say "I don't want Analytics to track me, ever". Bam -- done deal. No more Analytics tracking for said user on any site.

I think this is a brilliant PR move on the part of Google. Out of a 100% of all browser users, how many know add-ons exist? How many are aware of Analytics? Out of those, how many would go through the trouble of locating and installing anti-Analytics for their browser? I'm guessing is comes down to less than 0.5% of all users. So it's a total win for Google here; privacy lovers can't whine because it's really the only Analytics suite with selective opt-out (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) while on the whole, Analytics won't be affected at all. Genius.

Google Analytics to allow per-user opt-out originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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google analytic - Google - Download Squad - Searching - Search Engines

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Literally every day at Betanews, we get at least one security vendor "alert" of some type, warning us to be on the lookout for the latest malware. The message is always the same: Advise users to stay vigilant, to keep patching, to upgrade their antivirus to the latest editions. But the profiles of the malware typically look the same, too -- stuff you might click on by accident, links pretending to be from your "best friend" in an e-mail message, ads for products that look too good to be true.

For many of us, the situation is getting to be like the US' terror alert level, which has remained at "Yellow" since the fall of 2007. We starting to forget what "elevated" vigilance means. And maybe that's a problem, because lack of attention to advice about real threats could become as dangerous as lack of attention to any one of those miracle weight-loss links.

This isn't an ad, it's my opinion: Over the years, I've trusted the engineers at Sophos Labs to present down-to-earth analyses of possible security scares. This morning, I forwarded two recent reports from other well-known security vendors to Sophos' Chester Wisniewski, reports about malware that didn't fit the ordinary profile we tend to see from day to day.

The first report comes from ALWIL Software, publishers of Avast anti-virus, and it's been heavily circulated since it was first issued last February. It speaks of the horrors of receiving unsolicited malware by way of JavaScript elements embedded in the ads that appear on Web sites -- the sources of which, sometimes, innocent publishers have no control over.

"The malware usually spreads through Web infection placed on innocent, badly secured Web sites," reads last month's initial warning from the Czech Republic-based Avast's Jiri Sejtko. "The ad infiltration method is growing in popularity alongside with the Web site infections. Now we are facing probably the biggest ad poisoning ever made -- all important ad services are affected. It means that users might get infected just by reading their favorite newspaper or by doing search on famous Web indexers. User interaction is not needed in this attack -- infection begins just after poisoned ad is loaded by the browser -- it is not a type of social engineering."

A chart from the ALWIL security research team showing what it claims to be the number of detected instances of malware sent by advertising platforms over a six-day period.

ALWIL's research found the Fox Audience Network as among the ad platforms spreading the alleged infection, which the firm dubbed "JS:Prontexi." On Tuesday, a public relations effort by the firm dubbed the malware a "widespread campaign," leading to blanket coverage such as this story in Media Post on Tuesday, this story in the Danish BizReport earlier today, and this blog post on Photoxels, which contains the original press release in its entirety.

That press release stated as many as one in two online ads served worldwide was in danger of being infected by the malware the ALWIL team discovered. "JS:Prontexi highlights the lack of care shown by advertising services providers to actively screen the content they are distributing," Sejtko is quoted as saying.

Can this problem truly be this bad -- a malware component with a 50% worldwide Web reach?

"Infections on ad services are certainly of heightened concern," Sophos' Chet Wisniewski told Betanews earlier today, "yet this is almost a month old, and the miscreants who caused this incident have since moved on. To claim it as the biggest ad server compromise ever seems to me to be a bit of hyperbole." The moral of the story, according to the ALWIL press release: Pay attention to situations where you may think antivirus software like Avast is returning false positives...they may not be false. Again quoting Sejtko, "Consumers shouldn't immediately accuse their antivirus program of a false positive when a familiar site gets blocked. There can be a real danger."

The other "red alert" this week comes from McAfee Labs, as part of its new program of publishing "Consumer Threat Alerts." One of the first such alerts yesterday concerns a worldwide "Facebook password reset scam." Here, users worldwide are sent an ordinary e-mail -- no graphics, no text formatting, just an e-mail with an attachment: "Dear user of facebook [sic], Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in attached document. Thanks, Your Facebook."

As McAfee's threat alert from yesterday reads, "This threat is potentially very dangerous considering that there are over 400 million Facebook users who could fall for this scam. This is also the sixth most prevalent piece of malware targeting consumers in the last 24 hours, as tracked by McAfee Labs." Since this is also the type of phishing scam that we see here at Betanews every single day (sometimes every few hours), certainly this can't be the kind of malware delivery mechanism that people fall for, can it? Haven't people smelled this kind of scam long enough to spot it at a distance?

Surprise. As Wisniewski told us, this one deserves the red flag and the blaring klaxons.

"We are seeing very high volumes of this attack. Sophos detects the attachments as TROJ/Invo-Zip, which we talked about being involved in a similar MySpace attack this January. It then proceeds to infect you with Mal/FakeAV-BW (Fake Anti-virus). The same malware is also making the rounds as a fake delivery notification from DHL. The only thing unique is the extremely high volumes and the large user base that Facebook has that could be convinced to run the malware."

So to recap: A completely unsophisticated e-mail attachment, of the garden variety we've seen for the last 15 year, is seen by Sophos as being more dangerous and widespread than an embedded JavaScript that one security researcher says has the potential of appearing in half the world's online ads. The only way to ever find out the truth, is to ask the right questions of the right people.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

[The Master Shake Signal] Ever heard of a French gaming chain named Micromania? Yeah, neither had we until this morning's GameStop conference call, where the game retail giant's CEO J. Paul Raines specifically cited the (GameStop-owned since 2008) franchise for its member loyalty program ("Megacard") and the success it's had in Europe. "We believe that the loyalty program at Micromania drove some of the highest sales per store in Europe that we've seen, so we think it's a very effective program, and that's the base for what we added to our existing loyalty program here at the Edge," Raines said, confirming the rumored plan to add a customer loyalty system at GameStop. When asked about when the new loyalty program would start rolling out, Raines stated that it'll be arriving this May in "four markets" (which could be anything from entire regions of the US to specific states or anything in-between -- we've followed up for clarification).

So what can GameStop consumers expect from this new loyalty program? Not many details were given, but a few speculative ideas were offered. "Ours will have different rewards, it won't be purely a markdown program that gives you discounts once you reach a certain threshold," Raines said, adding, "It will also have unique rewards like tickets to shows and early entrance to midnight launch, etc." No mention was made of how this will effect those of you with current Edge card subscriptions, nor if this new rewards program will be separate altogether. We've contacted GameStop corporate for clarification and will update this post if we hear more, but for now you can read Raine's entire statement after the break.

Continue reading GameStop rewards program launching this May in 'four markets'

GameStop rewards program launching this May in 'four markets' originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[The Master Shake Signal] Ever heard of a French gaming chain named Micromania? Yeah, neither had we until this morning's GameStop conference call, where the game retail giant's CEO J. Paul Raines specifically cited the (GameStop-owned since 2008) franchise for its member loyalty program ("Megacard") and the success it's had in Europe. "We believe that the loyalty program at Micromania drove some of the highest sales per store in Europe that we've seen, so we think it's a very effective program, and that's the base for what we added to our existing loyalty program here at the Edge," Raines said, confirming the rumored plan to add a customer loyalty system at GameStop. When asked about when the new loyalty program would start rolling out, Raines stated that it'll be arriving this May in "four markets" (which could be anything from entire regions of the US to specific states or anything in-between -- we've followed up for clarification).

So what can GameStop consumers expect from this new loyalty program? Not many details were given, but a few speculative ideas were offered. "Ours will have different rewards, it won't be purely a markdown program that gives you discounts once you reach a certain threshold," Raines said, adding, "It will also have unique rewards like tickets to shows and early entrance to midnight launch, etc." No mention was made of how this will effect those of you with current Edge card subscriptions, nor if this new rewards program will be separate altogether. We've contacted GameStop corporate for clarification and will update this post if we hear more, but for now you can read Raine's entire statement after the break.

Continue reading GameStop rewards program launching this May in 'four markets'

GameStop rewards program launching this May in 'four markets' originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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12 cores may sound impressive, but as rumored, it’s likely just two of the latest six-core i7s working in tandem. Actually, now that I think about it, that is pretty impressive. I can’t think of who would need such ridiculous power and multi-threading, but I know my friends in ultra-HD video and effects can’t get enough Hz. I don’t know if programs like After Effects and Final Cut are really using OpenCL much yet, but that could be a major boost as well. However, as Apple Insider notes, the 980X is not meant to be used in a dual configuration, which would necessitate two motherboards. But hey, who knows? Apple is loco. We know this.

And hey, as long as you’re spending six or seven grand on a desktop, why not buy an insanely expensive, LED-backlit monitor as well? Apple should be dropping the 27″ version of their acclaimed Cinema Display series. Personally I’m a fan of the nice Dells that turn 90 degrees for portrait viewing, but I’m not going to trash talk on a perfectly good display like the Cinema.

The 24″ LED-lit display is a whopping $900, so you can expect this one to be significantly more. If they’re revealed at an event or some such, however, we might see a price drop on the 24″ in order to make the 27″ a logical jump at $1000. We’ll find out soon.

[via Gizmodo]

He's been acting for 30 years and recently even became part of a franchise (Dukes of Hazzard), but I would never think of Willie Nelson as a movie star. Yet the country music icon and star of 1980s Honeysuckle Rose has launched a production company called Luck Films, which will produce 3-5 films a year, many featuring Nelson and/or his music. Nelson isn't going at this alone, though. Joining him are actor/producer Kerry Wallum, actor/filmmaker Norman Macera and producers Scott Macauley and David Von Roehm. According to Variety, each release will have a budget under $3 million.

The company's first movie, which I can't find any info on except that it will star Nelson and start shooting in May, is called The Dry Gulch Kid. The next, titled Shoot Out of Luck, will feature Nelson and Randall 'Tex' Cobb as sideshow cowboys who "tangle" with the mob for a comedic hybrid of the Western and gangster genres. The film's IMDb page adds that it will be "a dramatic, suspenseful journey that ends with a musical celebration." Sounds to me like Stir Crazy meets The Cowboy Way meets ... well it doesn't really matter because it's Willie Nelson and Randall 'Tex' Cobb going up against the mob. My 1980s-dwelling adolescent self would have been all over it.

Filed under: Action, Comedy, Music & Musicals, Casting, Cinematical Indie

Continue reading Willie Nelson to Make 3-5 Films a Year

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Filed under: Motorsports, Europe

24 Hours of LeMons at Thunderhill - click above for high-res image gallery
That's right, the 2010 24 Hours of LeMons season champion team will be sent to France to enjoy the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For reals. Says LeMons Chief Perpetrator Jay Lamm, "I think it's only fit and proper that the very best team in LeMons see how seriously lame they still are in comparison." The winning team shouldn't expect the Audi-style treatment our man Damon Lavrinc received at last year's Le Mans. Sayeth the press release, "We'll pay the LeMons-grade airfare and lodging. (If you want to fly Emirates, enter F1.) We'll hook you up with some teams to hang out with. We'll even toss in some Fodor's and Sartre."

The big question then is why are they actually doing it? Why are they actually sending a bunch of greasy geeks used to fixing things with JB Weld and a Sawzal to Europe's most elegant and sophisticated race? When we asked Jay where this idea came from, he replied, "Absinthe, if I recall correctly." However, if you make the jump you can see second in command Nick "Deuce-Deuce" Pon's longer, more thoughtful, slightly NSFW explanation of why plus the actual press release.

Gallery: 2009 24 Hours of LeMons Champs plus Thunderhill

Continue reading Win 24 Hours of LeMons, go to 24 Hours of Le Mans

Win 24 Hours of LeMons, go to 24 Hours of Le Mans originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m at the NewsMorphosis Conference in Hawaii today locked in a day of debates about the state of news quality and how the hell we find a business model to keep paying for it. It’s a big issue locally– earlier this year three of Hawaii’s five largest TV news stations merged operations and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is  merging with the other daily paper the Honolulu Advertiser, resulting in plenty of layoffs and general civic concern.

So it’s fitting that the conference ended with a talk by John Temple, the editor of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s new Peer News site, a test case in how the future of local news could work. And thankfully, we finally got a few more details on the site and the approach.

Temple was clear to say “there is no silver bullet” when it comes to fixing the media business, but also sees a great deal of hope in the volatility– this from the guy who was head of the now shuttered Rocky Mountain News, a paper that’s already gone through what so many dailies are dreading.

“We’re not trying to reinvent a local newspaper and put it on the Web,” he said. Indeed, the mission of Peer News doesn’t even contain the words “news” or “media” or “paper.” It’s simply “to create a new civic square.” Core to the development of Peer were three questions:

-What is the role of a free press in a democracy?

-How would you best fulfill that on a local level using all the tools available today?

-How do you do that in a sustainable way?

On content, the most interesting thing Temple talked about was doing away with “articles” as we know them. He criticized the static, episodic nature by which journalists have traditional covered news, challenging readers to hunt through archives for the information they want. Instead, Peer’s “building block” will be a page that’s always updated almost like Wikipedia, or as he put it, “something closer to a living history on a topic that changes as it develops.” There will no longer be a sense of “missing” an article, because the “articles” will be living things. That also addresses the critique that local news swarms around one issue, then moves on. “We’re not going to be hot topic driven,” Temple says. Going back to those questions, Temple says the role of a free press is to inform citizens so they can make intelligent decisions. “Let’s stop making it so difficult,” he said.

The other hallmark of Peer’s approach is what has made blogs popular– a sense of community. But it’s certainly a different approach. For one thing, Peer won’t have “reporters” in the classical sense, it will have “hosts” who help facilitate this civic square answering questions for the community.  “In this era, the fact that newspapers still rewrite press releases is an embarrassment,” Temple said. “We’re not going to be stenographers. I think that’s a downfall of journalism.”

But for a site that intends to be very community oriented, there was one big shocker: Peer will not have comments. “(Comments) descend into racism, hate, ugliness and reflect badly on news organizations that have them,” said Temple. Why? Because people do not have to show their faces when they comment so there’s no sense of responsibility, he argued. “We think anonymity is a huge problem when it comes to comments,” he said.

Temple also emphasized that the coverage would not pull punches: “We’re going to call things like we see them. We think there’s real value in taking a stand.”

So what about that business model? As Temple noted, there aren’t that many business models out there to chose from. Unlike most media sites, this will be a member site that people “value and will pay for.” He added “advertising would not be a key focus for us.”

Peer should be launching early next quarter, so we’ll be able to see more of these ideas in action soon. But it’s clear that the site– or “news service” as it prefers to call itself– is taking a markedly different approach from old and what we consider “new” media right now.

And with the benefit of some of these details, it seems less out of step for Omidyar to be starting this company. EBay, after all, was one of the first sites to powerfully leverage community on the Web, pioneering a lot of the systems of trust and reputation we still use today.

(More on Temple’s blog here.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was incredibly skeptical until about a week ago when 20th Century Fox posted this special behind-the-scenes look at Nimrod Antal's Predators, the latest film in the franchise from Troublemaker Studios producer Robert Rodriguez. The tease was simply astounding leaving me drooling for today's trailer debut -- speaking of, it's now online and available for viewing below! What do you think? Are you reading to head to the aliens' home planet on July 9th?

In a scorching post on the company's blog, YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine accuses Viacom of going to great lengths to secretly upload videos to YouTube in order to take advantage of its promotional value even as they were suing YouTube, arguing that YouTube should be able to tell the difference between Viacom videos that were uploaded by actual infringers as opposed to Viacom employees and agents being paid to pretend to be infringers. For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube. Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself. Given Viacom's own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong. Broadcast Yourself (via /.) (Image: Kara Swisher and Philippe Dauman, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Joi's photostream) Previously:YouTube user data must be turned over to Viacom, judge rules ... Ontario Privacy Commissioner to Google: Fight the Viacom/YouTube ... Viacom terrorizes YouTube with bullshit DMCA notices EFF sues Viacom over YouTube takedown of Colbert parody Viacom: privacy-hating hypocrites YouTube/Google sued by Viacom for a billion bucks Infringing Viacom claims copyright infringement...

Music is moving into the cloud, right? Access is replacing ownership of albums and song files, online streams are replacing desktop playback and mobile access is renewing interest in on-demand music subscriptions. Older services such as Rhapsody and Napster now appear prescient, though they never quite went mainstream, and newer ones such as Spotify and MOG are attracting big VC dollars.

So how come I’m still not ready to pay for any of them?

I’m a voracious music listener, one with varied but quite specific tastes and as such, a large collection of albums and songs in both physical and digital form. After taking several different subscription services for a test-drive, however, I found that they provide a good — but still very flawed — experience. Here are five reasons why:

There are still significant gaps in the catalog. As I wrote yesterday, the services may offer all you can eat, but their menus aren’t always complete, and they keep changing. It’s frustrating to pay for a service that doesn’t have songs you want, and even more frustrating when songs that used to be there aren’t anymore.

I still can’t merge things I own with things I just want to stream. Nearly all music fans have songs in their collections that aren’t on any subscription service. It could be an unlicensed mashup, your friend’s band, the Beatles or Led Zeppelin. But there’s still no subscription service that lets me make a party playlist that includes both Beach House and the Beatles. I choose not to own the former, and I’ve got MP3s of the latter, but I can’t have them both side-by-side. (Spotify, for one, may be working on a remedy for this, but as far as I know it hasn’t gone live anywhere yet.)

Ownership of music still provides a smoother listening experience. Try listening to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” or any live album with applause between songs on these services, and you might start wondering where your CD player is. When the next song doesn’t load fast enough to pick up where the previous one leaves off, you’ll hear an abrupt silence –- a major turnoff during album-length pieces with continuous “banded” tracks that run together. When I use iTunes, there’s sometimes an audible seam but no pause, with an option to crossfade; physical formats have no such issues. In this respect, the cloud-based experience can be a degraded one.

I can only share music with fellow subscribers. If playlists are the new mixtapes, as Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said this week at SXSW, I’d like to share them with my friends. In a market as fragmented as music-as-a-service is shaping up to be, playlist sharing won’t be that compelling until we’re all using the same service — or at the very least, compatible ones. This isn’t as big an issue when there’s a free component, as with Spotify and Rhapsody, but in general, until a critical mass of my friends are subscribing, there will be better ways to share. (I miss you, Imeem. You too, Muxtape.) The MP3 file is very flexible; cloud-based subscriptions still aren’t.

I can still hear things that I don’t already own without paying for them. I’ve already got a lot of music, and there are still new records I’d prefer to own, and for which I will happily pay. (You might be very different.)  But I can also hear an awful lot of on-demand free music via both legitimate and legally questionable channels: Hype Machine, Lala.com, Grooveshark, Play.me, YouTube, Blip.fm, FreeAllMusic, BeeMP3.com, Skreemr, MySpace and elsewhere. Pandora and Last.fm help me discover things through a sort of customized serendipity, while the blogosphere provides curated discovery. Yes, an on-demand subscription gives me more, sometimes in a better-quality experience. But for things I might not choose to own, free options are often still good enough. (Remember, more than 95 percent of Spotify’s users think the free version is good enough, too.)

Music subscriptions are improving, and I imagine that most of my quibbles will be dealt with in time. (See my further discussion of the services in this GigaOM Pro piece, sub req’d.) But for now, I still view subscription services as supplementary — not primary — sources of music, and ones that haven’t done much to change my preference for a hybrid of music ownership and free options.

As I said, I’m a voracious music listener with varied but quite specific tastes. And if subscription services’ numbers are any indication, there are millions of subscribers out there who are quite satisfied with what they’re paying for. So I’d love to hear more about how subscriptions work for you -– or don’t.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user itchy73

Related content from GigaOM Pro:

Rankings: Spotify Leads the Streaming Music Scene

If you thought that wearing fur was outdated - what with all those green movements and animal rights activists who put this cruel sense of fashion in its right place with the likes of Cruella de Vil - fashionista's say, think again.

Last month the fashion world went literally “wild” in New York, Paris and Milan during the unveiling of their fall collection. They had models strutting the catwalk in so much fur, it was scary enough to make animal rights activists and environmentalists jump out of their skins.

In this era of global warming and dwindling animal species, one would think that we humans would come to our senses and rethink our actions. Not so, it seems, as there is a whole other world out there - the fashion industry of the west - whose endorsement and use of fur and exotic animal products simply encourages the mass slaughter of many endangered species.

A dealer's bounty at the Quartzite annual show for art and crafts. Image by Flickr user cobalt123. Used under a Creative Commons License

To name a few, the Chiru or Tibetan antelope, whose underbelly fur is used to make “Shatoosh” the world's most expensive shawls, also known as “shawls of death”. It takes 3 dead antelopes, to make one shawl, so fine it can fit through a finger ring, and each one can cost between $5000 to $20,000 in the international market. Even babies, and mother's who have just delivered, are not spared.

According to WWF, the population of this species has declined by over 50 percent in the last 20 years and the Tibetan Plateau Project says that it was the fashion-driven demand for Shatoosh in the U.S that resulted in as many as 20,000 antelopes being slaughtered. It is alarming to know that the animal could become extinct in the next three years at this rate.

In a blog run by Uma and Hurree called Animal Rights India, they argue how farming of Chiru's - like Eider ducks in Iceland for eider (as an alternative), will not make a difference to the dwindling numbers.

But hello: Eider ducks are now a protected species, and farmers in iceland use a technique of collecting the down without harming the bird. And no, it is not possible to obtain the shahtoosh wool without killing the chiru.

They go on to say:

It's impossible to justify killing three beautiful wild animals every time you want to push a length of shawl through a ring, blah blah. And to farm them just to kill them for shawls?

Raja Basu, another blogger said:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) – which controls the trade in endangered species products – has completely banned international trade in Tibetan antelope products (including Shahtoosh). It is illegal to import Shahtoosh into many countries, including the USA (ironically, Shahtoosh products are so popular in the US fashion industry). Unfortunately, despite such laws being in place, the Shahtoosh trade is going on in full swing. This is because it is not enough to have laws. There must also be a strong public protest across the board against every person who is by any means related to the Shahtoosh trade. There should be a widespread public sensitization campaign to educate the common people.

Bloggers in the west, however, were giving this some thought and debated:

Rachel Menashy wrote on her blog:

1. People eat rabbits at restaurants. These rabbits have been killed to provide ‘dinner' for people like us (I would like to point out that I have never eaten rabbit and by ‘us' I mean people who eat in restaurants). Why is it right that rabbits can feature on a menu in a restaurant but wrong to wear a fur coat? These rabbits inevitably are skinned in preparation to be cooked - what else should we do with the fur?

2. Is it more acceptable if the coat is Vintage? Why?

3. Is rabbit fur better/worse than Mink? Some argue that rabbit fur is not as bad because rabbits are not in danger of becoming extinct, unlike mink which is. Then again, people keep rabbits as pets so is it more cruel to wear rabbit than mink?

4. If a fur coat is hanging on a rail at a store and one customer refuses to buy it, somebody else will…

5. Should role models such as Kate Moss be seen wearing fur? Kate's style is copied by millions of girls (and women) - is she giving a bad impression?

To which Denise replied:

1. I would personally be more likely to wear rather than eat rabbit. The eating of it seems less acceptable somehow.
2.Vintage coats have been around for a while and should be recycled - which I'm definitely into.
3. Mink are feral creatures and even though their fur is more desirable, mink are not aiming for extinction, so why not wear it?
4. Agreed.
5. I don't mind fur being worn by anyone, and Kate Moss is just showing that this is acceptable. Too many people are on the “fur is bad” bandwagon. I bet most of these people eat meat and wear leather, so what's the difference?

But there is a difference as Barry Williams responded to a thread: Wearing Fur is not immoral on www.helium.com

If we go around killing cattle for leather, alligators for shoes, deer for chamois and see nothing morally wrong in that , why it is immoral to wear fur. What I see as immoral is the killing of animals simply for the fur alone. It really is such a waste, isn't it? Apart from the leather we obtain from cattle not much of the animal is wasted. Beef cattle supply our meat.

There are a multitude of arguments out there, but in the meantime the Humane Society for the United States, says that Canada will slaughter 388, 200 harp, grey and hooded seals this year, an increase of 50,000 from 2009. This, because of the overall demand for fur. The site of the Fur Council of Canada shows styles and celebrities modelling various furs in what it describes as a fashion trend of 2010.

And unfortunately in the U.S, and much of the west, where Global Fashion trends are set, laws don't seem to be enough to curb their greed. According to the International Fur Trade Federation Blog:

..the shift in the attitude towards fur can be attributed to “changes within the fur trade, such as the introduction of the new Origin Assured initiative, which guarantees that fur bearing the label comes from a country with animal welfare regulations”. This shows that the fur trade efforts and initiatives to challenge the outdated ideas of our industry have been noticed. We are a transparent and well-regulated industry that supports high animal welfare standards and we welcome the confidence and support shown by the fashion designers as well as the European Commission, who recently recognised the importance of the Origin Assured label.

Fashion designers who have been courted by Furriers say they are “confident using fur after examining the chain of production and finding it humane. But could this confidence be based on a lack of investigation or knowledge? According to an endangered species handbook :

The New York luxury department store, Bergdorf Goodman, advertised shahtoosh in 1995 as a “royal and rare” fabric, making incorrect statements about the wool having been obtained from the Mountain Ibex goat of Tibet which “sheds its down undercoat by scratching itself against low trees and bushes” from where it is gathered by local shepherds (Schaller 1998)

And if the clubbing of baby seals and mass slaughtering of Chiras, mothers and babies, is “humane” then its sad to think of what “humane” means anymore, and what we are willing to condone in the name of “Fashion”.

Thanks everyone for your questions to my previous post on this subject. Now the results:

Everyone should install the Maemo Extras application catalog. Just unleash your phone by installing this repository.

After you are done installing this we go to the questions:

• How is XMPP working out?
  Good, so go doing your Facebooking or Jabbering everywhere. not to speak you Google Taking
• The “Unlocks with ’sudo gainroot’” needs a footnote:
  * you need to enable the Maemo Extras application catalog (see above) and install “rootsh”
  * or, alternatively (and less conveniently), you need to enable R&D mode with the flasher command-line tool on a PC, with the N900 connected over USB
• Does the browser (fennec iirc?) include support for playing back Ogg video and audio?
  Ogg support can be added as an additional download. You do have the real Firefox now, or so claims Nokia.
• Telepathy supports skype? Haven’t heard of this, but it would be _really_ cool!
  As written in my post “you have skype, but no skype app which is a plus.” Yes telepathy handles skype as it handles any other protocol. MSN call support is coming soon as well.
• I’d really like to know how easy is to exploit all the cool features of N900 in a self made program (with Maemo SDK or maybe QT 4.6). I mean, the N900 has a built in camera, AGPS, accelerometer, FM-transmitter and so on... is it possibile to write a custom program that uses one or more of these things? For example (it is really just a weird example) if I want to take a photo with the camera each time the phone is “shaked”, I could do it? If I want to save my GPS coordinates every 30 minutes in a text file, I could do it?
  I guess I won’t be answering that question in this life time… If (and only if) I ever try programming anything for maemo it will be in Python. I guess you can do pretty neat things with QT + other libs as this application shows. A detailed example of that app here (De-Spotify related).
• Test a/v calling on gtalk,jabber using telepathy works or not?
  tried once and didn’t work. It could have been me or my other peer either being retarded or just using Linux with the wrong sound config (experienced it before and it had nothing to do with i.e. skype being wrong)
• I have seen many people talking about unexpected errors, slow performance, etc. What´s your overall experience?
  I experience it as the easiest piece of tech I have ever had. It really is fast and gives me no headaches.
• Can you install .deb packages that are valid for a standard PC?
  I guess I should elaborate in this question but I won’t. A deb package made in your PC for the N900 architecture (armel) should work. But a standard x86 deb will not.
• Can you install pidgin?
  Why on earth would I want to do that? Telepathy is totally integrated in my contact list and relevant applications… Pidgin in this context would be like having a skype application: Just overhead! Think of this as a new approach at the way you communicate, not a reproduction of an ineffective way of doing things.
• I assume you mention OpenSSH from a client perspective. Can the N900 run the server side? (not sure that makes sense, but I am curious)
  It can and it rocks.
• How many apps you feel it can run in parallel before it feels bloated?
  I have my screen full of phone related apps, browser windows, multimedia stuff and random apps (terminal, chess, camera) and it still does not feel bloated at all. I really mean it. I never get irritated by this phone!
• For how much you bought it and from where i am in Egypt and i want to buy one?
  I did not buy it. I am just borrowing it (sort of) from a friend @ Nokia.
• Its usefulness ...
  It helps me being more effective when I am on the move and at the office. So it really is useful. Not to speak of its awesomeness when enjoying my private time (i.e. camera & video features)
• I’ve ordered one that wont arrive for another month =( A few questions related to barcodes. Can you take a picture of a barcode show it full screen and have scanners scan it?
  I read somewhere that you should be able to do so. Google it mate. I don’t need that and really don’t have time to test that, sorry.
• Is there a barcode scanner tool? Bonus for price comparison tools. Sometimes I’ll be browsing used game stores and see a game fairly cheap and wonder whether I can get it cheaper elsewhere.
  Read  questions #14
• If it isn’t too much trouble, I would like to know how well emacs works on the device, I notice it doesn’t have a meta key.
  Have given emacs way too many chances in other devices to make my life harder in this one. I am really not the right person to ask as I do not feel emacs works at all anywhere (and the same goes for vi/vim so do not hate the player, hate the game!
• Web browsing while playing music (recorded or streaming); heard complaints that playback may become choppy.
  Works like a charm even under crappy wi-fi conditions.
• Listening to music over BT stereo headphones and answering calls. Voice commands over BT?
  Lost my BT headset for a while ago and I really am not interested in buying a new one. If someone has experience on this please answer in the comments.
• Video calling. I know it’s not there yet in the integrated skype. But what about Fring or Gtalk or Ytalk?
  Tried skype and it worked like a charm. Do not use any of the others, sorry.
• Voice announcements of incoming messages while listening to music over BT?
  No idea. Read #18
• Smoothness of video playback, whether recorded or streaming? (Again, heard complaints of choppiness.)
  I recorded the audio and video at a concert last weekend and it really worked well. It might just be me and my lack of interest in video/audio quality in general.
• Does it have what it takes to play h264 videos in mkv containers?
  How can i test that?
• Can you try different resolutions?
  Why should I ever wish that? Drop me the command and I will run them
• How is the sound quality on mp3, ogg and flac files?
  Great. Nokia ere is king among mobile producers. Nothing can even compare to it, specialy when playing from the speakers. When using headphones it just rocks!
• How is the performance like for traditional desktop apps(amarok, akregator, openoffice.org)?
  I dreamed of installing the debian extra for maemo but never got far with it. Now I really do not feel like blowing up my preciously nice working N900.
• How is the performance of the ‘big’ desktop environments (xfce, gnome, kde)
  Hope I never have the time to go through that operation so I won’t have an answer.
• I’d like to see tested is how well this device works as a phone while all the other crazy hacks are going on.
  Works like a charm!
• Test call quality, battery life, address book functionality, etc.
  Cal quality is good. Battery life could be better (will last one day and two at the most)  and Address Book functionality is very nice specially if you think about how well integrated everything is. I have had several smartphones over the years and never seen anything like this.
• I am curious how well the calendar works, and more importantly, how well it synchronizes with Google Calendar.
  I’ve heard it works like a charm although I do not use Gcalender so I couldn’t tell.
• Does it run X11?
  I want to know but I don’t. It might do as I can connect to external machines with ssh -X and get apps running on the N900 (such as eclipse)
• In other words, is it pie-in-the-sky to expect to use it as a full-blown Linux box?
  It ain’t a box, it’s a pone with debian. Isn’t that enough for you? It certainly works for me!

Thanks for reading!

A website is putting together a variety of info including rumors of a new slim Xbox 360 motherboard, USB HDD support and previous MS practices to conclude that MS will drop the 360's price down to $149 at E3 and also announce a $199 Xbox 360 Slim. Would be great if true, but we can't see it happening, what do you think? Based on the information we have so far, we're looking at a liquidation of the current model Xbox 360s for $149. This will open up retail space for the Slims

Reports have been swirling that Apple plans to ban screen protectors from its brick and mortar retail stores, but for the time being, the items seem to be plentiful throughout many store locations. Several Apple Stores we contacted Thursday afternoon assured Ars that there were currently "plenty" of screen protectors in stock, and did not indicate that this would change anytime soon. (One sales associate went as far as listing off all the variations that were in stock.) None of the outlets mentioned anything about the impending ban or removing the product from inventory in the future.

Rumors of Apple’s supposed ban started Wednesday when iLounge reported that several companies had been informed that, starting in May, Apple would no longer carry screen protectors in their retail stores. According to iLounge's sources, stand-alone solutions as well as those bundled with cases will eventually be removed. 

There were so many pundit theories about what could have sparked the decision that iLounge wrote a follow-up article to address them. The conspiracy theorists came up with all kinds of reasons: Apple is making room for iPad accessories, Apple wants you to ruin your phone so you have to buy another, the iPhone is too classy for a flimsy piece of plastic, etc. Our personal favorite theory was that Apple might be planning a new product or technology that doesn’t work properly with the film applied. iLounge even got an e-mail from an Apple Store employee, suggesting that the ban might be due to the difficulty in applying the protective layer. Apparently, this employee's store barred employees from doing this for customers some time ago.

In our experiences here at Ars, the iPhone screen is extremely hard to scratch, though some of us have admittedly had much better luck than others. It seems much more likely that an iPhone screen will crack due to a fall than it will develop noticeable scratch. In that case, no amount of thin, flimsy, plastic is going to save your device from that.

What Apple is up to is really anyone's guess. We would like to think that Apple is coming out with its own line of overpriced iPhone screen protectors, but it's more likely they are just more trouble than they're worth for Apple. Screen protectors may still be available at Apple Stores, but probably not for long. Don't worry—you can get the exact same thing for your iPhone from places like Best Buy, Fry's, and almost any other outlet that sells iPhone accessories. 

Read the comments on this post

Reports have been swirling that Apple plans to ban screen protectors from its brick and mortar retail stores, but for the time being, the items seem to be plentiful throughout many store locations. Several Apple Stores we contacted Thursday afternoon assured Ars that there were currently "plenty" of screen protectors in stock, and did not indicate that this would change anytime soon. (One sales associate went as far as listing off all the variations that were in stock.) None of the outlets mentioned anything about the impending ban or removing the product from inventory in the future.

Rumors of Apple’s supposed ban started Wednesday when iLounge reported that several companies had been informed that, starting in May, Apple would no longer carry screen protectors in their retail stores. According to iLounge's sources, stand-alone solutions as well as those bundled with cases will eventually be removed. 

There were so many pundit theories about what could have sparked the decision that iLounge wrote a follow-up article to address them. The conspiracy theorists came up with all kinds of reasons: Apple is making room for iPad accessories, Apple wants you to ruin your phone so you have to buy another, the iPhone is too classy for a flimsy piece of plastic, etc. Our personal favorite theory was that Apple might be planning a new product or technology that doesn’t work properly with the film applied. iLounge even got an e-mail from an Apple Store employee, suggesting that the ban might be due to the difficulty in applying the protective layer. Apparently, this employee's store barred employees from doing this for customers some time ago.

In our experiences here at Ars, the iPhone screen is extremely hard to scratch, though some of us have admittedly had much better luck than others. It seems much more likely that an iPhone screen will crack due to a fall than it will develop noticeable scratch. In that case, no amount of thin, flimsy, plastic is going to save your device from that.

What Apple is up to is really anyone's guess. We would like to think that Apple is coming out with its own line of overpriced iPhone screen protectors, but it's more likely they are just more trouble than they're worth for Apple. Screen protectors may still be available at Apple Stores, but probably not for long. Don't worry—you can get the exact same thing for your iPhone from places like Best Buy, Fry's, and almost any other outlet that sells iPhone accessories. 

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It’s always nice to see when technology takes a cue from nature. In this case, the Bloom Light.

The Bloom Light is the creation of Patrick Jouin. It is merely a concept for now, but it could very easily be something that I would put in my reading room. This would be assuming that I have a reading room, which I do not.

As you can see, it is something that looks like an ordinary bulb, at least at the beginning. And by the word “bulb”, I mean something like a flower bud. I think “bud” is probably the best explanation as the light blooms like a flower. This allows the light to be spread out amongst the room, and I’m guessing that it makes some pretty patterns.

Maybe if it spins, it can become something like a disco chandelier. It sort of reminds me of the “primary weapons” on the big honkin’ motherships in Independence Day. I suppose that if the Bloom Light was a chandelier, I might get nervous that it was going to incinerate me.

Still, I like this design, and would love to have it on my ceiling or post lamp. It is not for sale now, but it will be on display at the International Furniture Fair in Milan.

Source
Introducing Foolish Gadgets because not all gadgets are cool
[ Bloom Light unfolds for more luminescence copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Filed under: Truck, Etc., Government/Legal, Videos, Military

What happens when an unstoppable force encounters an immovable object? - Click above to see the video after the jump
We recently received the email below from a friend and felt like we had to share. We really think you'll like this one.
How many times have you wondered how strong those cement barriers are, that you see in front of military base entrances? (Are all barriers created equal?)

This was sent by someone who works for the Army Corp of Engineers:

From time to time someone asks me what the concrete barriers are in front of controlled and secure buildings. When I tell them that the barriers will stop traffic, even trucks, from approaching the secured building I usually get a look of disbelief.

Truck = 65,000 lbs. ~ Speed = 50 mph Follow the jump to see what happens when an unstoppable force encounters an immovable object.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading Video: Mr. Unstoppable Force, this is Mr. Immovable Object

Video: Mr. Unstoppable Force, this is Mr. Immovable Object originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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David Byrne on Collaborations: "A writer at Pitchfork critically said I'd collaborate for a bag of Doritos. I do love it, and the results are sometimes surprising, sometimes creatively successful and sometimes even popular ("Lazy" was a huge hit everywhere except the US)." On song writing, "After the initial transcription of verbal sounds into nonsense sentences made of real words, a long, tedious process begins. I then begin to write out every phrase I can think of that matches that sonic/syllabic flow — no phrase is too mundane or stupid. I try not to pre-judge anything that occurs to me at this point — one never knows if something that sounded stupid at first will, in a new context, make the whole thing shine."

Sales of digital downloads have not been enough to make up for the decline of CD sales since its peak in 2000. Universal Music Group plans to soften the fall of CD sales by dropping prices across the board, to a maximum of $10.

The company plans to test lower prices beginning next month and continuing throughout 2010. Nearly all of UMG's CDs will priced between $6 and $10. UMG is hoping that increased volume will make up for the price drop, and the company plans to create more higher-priced "deluxe" versions for more hardcore fans.

"We think [the new pricing program] will really bring new life into the physical format," Universal Music Group Distribution president and CEO Jim Urie told Billboard.

Retailers have been clamoring for lower retails prices, with many believing that $10 is the magic number to spur sales. (I'll admit, I rarely buy a physical CD for more than $10 these days). A recent test from Trans World Entertainment showed that a $9.99 price point doubled CD sales in over 100 of its stores.

Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan thinks labels may have to consider pushing prices as low as $5 to further slow the decline of CD sales. "The CD is a dying music product format, but it has some life left in it because downloads haven't generated the format replacement they were expected to," he wrote. "With all previous music formats the successor format was firmly in the ascendancy by the time its predecessor was in terminal decline."

However, digital downloads won't ever generate format replacement. Music on CDs is already in digital format—if you own the CD already, there's no benefit in "replacing" it with a digital download. Furthermore, it will be hard to justify spending $10 on a compressed digital download over $6 for an actual physical disc that can be ripped into iTunes or any other media software in a matter of minutes, and can be done using lossless encoding (if so desired).

iTunes LP, thought by the record labels to helpsave the digital album from succumbing to single track downloads, isn't making much of a splash with consumers, either.

Effectively what UMG is doing—and what other labels will do if they also decide that lowering prices will prop up dying CD sales—is giving consumers the expectation that albums should cost even less than $9.99. Because once consumers become accustomed to getting a whole album in physical form for $6, you'll have a much harder time convincing them to buy downloaded albums for more money later. Lowering prices on CDs will increase sales in the short term—good for labels because CD sales still account for about 65 percent of their revenue—but it will only slow its demise, and slow the uptake of digital as a primary format.

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