This is looking pretty bad, but I like the reference to Ghost Trick in the title. If you're intrigued by the "ghost investigates his own murder" premise, you should totally play Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. It's on DS and iOS, and it's a fantastic game.
In Murdered: Soul Suspect, the man who killed you is primed to strike again. Catching him will be hard, partly because you’re a flimsy fedora ghost but mostly because this murderer leaves “no clues and no leads”. That’s according to the news reports in the trailer below, although they do mention immediately afterwards that a ‘crude drawing of a bell’ is left at the scene of the murders. That seems like it might be a clue, or maybe even a lead. Whether any information can be gleaned from the drawings or not, their existence has led to the perp being lumbered with ‘The Bell Killer’ as his murder-name. I was hoping that phantom protagonist Ronan O’Connor would make a grave reference to the fact that he met his bell end at the hands of the bell killer but, alas, it is not to be.
Would-be Twitter rival App.net today shed some light on its first major round of subscription renewals, and the outlook isn't so good. The "state of the union" starts off on a positive note, revealing that App.net has tallied enough renewals for the service "to be profitable and self-sustaining." Operating and hosting costs are covered, and co-founders Dalton Caldwell and Bryan Berg claim that App.net will "continue to operate normally on an indefinite basis."
That's where the good news ends. Apparently the renewal rate wasn't high enough to leave a sufficient salary for App.net's full-time employees (including Caldwell and Berg). Moving forward, App.net will no longer employ any salaried employees. "Dalton and Bryan will continue to be responsible for the operation of App.net, but no longer as employees." Contracted workers will continue to be paid for supporting and improving the product.
App.net will keep going as long as there are customers to support it
Starting today, App.net says it will begin to open source a larger percentage of its core codebase. The move allows community members to step up and add improvements and contributions of their own to push App.net's mission forward. "The continued support and interest of the App.net community is vital the continued health and wellbeing of the platform." Caldwell and Berg say their intention is to keep App.net running as long as there are customers using and supporting it. "We continue to believe in the usefulness of a sustainable social platform where users and developers are customers, and not the product being sold to advertisers."
App.net was created with the help of crowdfunding and a promise that it would steer clear of ad-based revenue. Caldwell envisioned a "better" and developer-friendly version of Twitter with a focus on users. But moving away from ads meant people would have to pay for that experience. To its credit, App.net has accumulated over 200,000 users and a talented developer community, but the road forward looks very uncertain.
Nintendo made an annual operating loss for the third consecutive year in 2013, ending up ¥46.4 billion ($457 million) in the red as Wii U sales failed to pick up following the holiday season. The Kyoto company's net loss was ¥23.2 billion ($228 million). Total Wii U sales now stand at 6.17 million consoles worldwide, meaning that Nintendo sold just 310,000 in the quarter ended March 31st — a 20 percent drop on its performance a year ago.
PS4 has already overtaken the Wii U
This is in stark contrast to Sony's fortunes with the PlayStation 4, which had reached 7 million consoles worldwide as of April 6th; Sony has already overtaken the Wii U despite Nintendo's year-long head start. The 3DS handheld family sold 590,000 units in Nintendo's fourth quarter for a life-to-date total of 43.3 million, 2.2 million of which are of the lower-priced 2DS variant.
Nintendo expects to return to the black in its 2014 fiscal year, forecasting an operating profit of ¥40 billion ($394 million) with 3.6m Wii U and 12m 3DS consoles sold. Shareholders may not take the claim at face value, though — CEO and president Satoru Iwata maintained until January that the company would make ¥100 billion profit in 2013, before backtracking dramatically and predicting a ¥35 billion loss on poor Wii U sales. As it turned out, Iwata underestimated the loss by more than ¥11 billion.
Nintendo expects to return to the black in 2014
"Nintendo will focus on efforts that seek to stimulate the platform," the company said in its release, promising to expand Wii U sales "by providing software that takes advantage of the Wii U GamePad, utilizing its built-in functionality as an NFC reader/writer, and adding Nintendo DS Virtual Console titles to the Wii U software lineup."
If 'Mario Kart 8' doesn't sell systems, what will?
Despite the release of the excellent Super Mario 3D World, the Wii U software situation hasn't improved a great deal, and Nintendo needs to pick up the pace. This month sees the release of Mario Kart 8, the latest entry in a franchise which is as close to a guaranteed system-seller as anything in Nintendo's stable; the Wii version sold over 34 million units, and Mario Kart 7 for 3DS has sold over 8 million copies to date.
Mario Kart 8's release will leave Super Smash Bros. as the only major first-party Wii U title on the calendar, however, and Nintendo will be expected to reveal a convincing software lineup over next month's E3 conference. One thing's for sure — if Mario Kart 8 doesn't perform, it's hard to imagine what might convince customers to pick up a Wii U.
In March, NBA star Shaquille O'Neal kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to fund a sequel to the infamous 16-bit game Shaq-Fu — and it may have been close, but the funding was ultimately successful. O'Neal and his development studio Big Deez Productions were looking to raise $450,000 to build the game, and ultimately secured $473,884 from more than 1,300 backers.
That includes six people who spent $250 to get a personalized voicemail from O'Neal, and five people who paid $500 so that the retired basketball star would follow them on Twitter. One lucky donor offered $35,000 so that O'Neal would DJ a party.
While the campaign initially sought to bring the game only to the PC, the final version is now expected to launch a number of consoles, including the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Wii U. No release date has been announced for Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn, and it looks like the game isn't particularly far along at present — Big Deez's Oliver Hollis-Leick says that following the successful funding campaign, "it's time to start production." Hopefully we'll find out soon what role cyberpunk Arsenio Hall will play in the game.
Google Maps for iOSand Android is getting a big update today, bringing stronger support for offline maps to both platforms, adding in lane guidance when driving, and integrating Uber as an option for getting around. Among the most helpful of the updates will certainly be offline maps, which is now front-and-center on iOS for the first time and in a more robust form on Android: after searching for or tapping on a location, Maps will display an option to save that area for use without an internet connection. Google is introducing a way to manage those offline maps too, allowing users to see what locations they have saved through their profile.
Why walk when you can Uber?Turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps is also getting a lot more helpful with today's update. In the US, as well as parts of Canada and Japan, Maps will now tell drivers if they should stay in their lane or move over to a different one when they're approaching an exit or a turn. The update will also put drivers just a tap away from changing to an alternate route, rather than leaving drivers stuck with whatever route they initially chose.
Maps is also building Uber into its options for getting around. In certain cities — presumably those where Uber operates — anyone who has Uber's app installed will see a "Get an Uber" option along with an estimated transportation time when searching for public transit or walking directions. It's an interesting integration, especially given Google Ventures' sizeable investment in Uber. Uber is certainly at the forefront of taxi apps, but it's far from the only option available in many big cities.
Correction, May 6th, 2:05PM ET: Offline maps were previously available on iOS through an easter egg, in which typing "OK Maps" into the search bar would save whatever area was on screen. This article previously stated that offlline maps were coming to iOS for the first time.
The injury time goal booked Barça a place in the 2009 Champions League Final in Rome
On May 6, 2009 Barça enjoyed one of their most magical European nights in the Club’s history. After a goalless draw at the Camp Nou in the first leg, Barça travelled to London to face Chelsea in the second leg, with a place in the Rome final at stake. It was a tough game and after Essien put the hosts one up after nine minutes, Barça found it hard to get their game into full swing, a situation made even tougher by the sending off of Abidal on 66 minutes.
Time seemed to have run out as on 92 minutes Xavi spread the ball wide on the right for Dani Alves whose cross to the far post fell to Eto’o, who was unable to control the ball. Essien cleared, but only as far as Messi who burst to the edge of the box before squaring the ball to Iniesta. The Spanish midfielder fired home a brilliant effort to the left of Cech and Barça were in the final!
That goal set up the 2-0 win against Manchester United in the Rome Final to give the team a treble of League, Cup and Champions League, titles that they went on to add to with the Spanish and European Super Cups and the World Club Cup to round off a remarkable 2009 with six trophies and that Iniesta goal on May 6 at Stamford Bridge was a key moment in that historic year.
Koush has been busy since leaving Cyanogen Inc. to spend more time working on his various projects. A new update for AllCast is set to roll out soon with an interesting new feature. Users with a Fire TV will be able to stream video to the TV, but route the audio through the phone only. Why would you want to do this? It's private listening mode.
This feature will allow you to plug in headphones and listen to the audio track via the phone or tablet without disturbing anyone else nearby.
Just a week after the food substitute shipped to its first official customers, soylent is now the subject of a long New Yorker profile from Lizzie Widdicombe, following founder Rob Rhineheart as he pitches his nutrition powder to a broader audience. Widdicombe focuses on Soylent's path to prominence in Silicon Valley, glossing over long-term nutritional concerns from skeptics but turning up some unexpected details along the way. One early version of the powder included too much sulfur, which meant that for days, Rhineheart and the other alpha testers "emitted clouds of sulfurous gas." As Rhineheart recalls, "I cleared out a jazz theater once."
It’s always odd to hear people say RSS is dead. The fact is, RSS is easily the most successful stealth, insurgent technology on the web. It is pervasive and is the engine for much of the Internet.
Apple uses it to syndicate computer updates. Your podcast subscriptions rely on RSS. Every Wordpress blog is RSS enabled and every major news site is broadcasting via RSS. They’re all syndicated. They all have an RSS feed. It’s the background hum of the Internet.
There are millions of feeds out there, continually connecting users to their favorite content. Just about everything online except Facebook and Twitter is available via RSS.
Even more importantly, RSS has proven to be resilient and durable regardless of what corporate interests want to do with it. Netscape invented the underlying code in the late 90’s, and then took away all documentation and support in 2001 after AOL bought them out. But even that didn’t slow the dissemination.
And then last year, the biggest player on the Internet took its ball and went home when Google killed its Reader. Despite the fact that Google retired the most popular RSS application on the Net, it did not affect RSS in any appreciable way. All of those feeds are still available and users are still getting their content delivered exactly as they want it. What greater proof is there of the resiliency of RSS?
In fact, what might have seemed like a disaster at first is perhaps the best thing that could happen to the technology. Remember, RSS is a technology and a service; it is not a product. AOL thought they could squash this great idea, but a community of developers took the idea and ran. Then Google thought they could abandon the technology and assumed everyone would gravitate to their social networks instead.
In fact, any number of companies can go out of business, but nobody can stop anybody from publishing and reading RSS feeds.
However, just because a technology is widely available does not guarantee success. What makes RSS truly powerful is that users still have the control. The beauty of the system is it that no one can force you to be tracked and no one can force you to watch ads. There are no security issues I am aware of and no one ever has to know what feeds you subscribe to. This may be the last area of the Internet that you can still say things like this.
Google Reader was a monopolist product built on an anti-monopolist technology. Now that they’re gone, RSS is once again anyone’s game. You’re going to see a lot more innovation and new stuff for RSS. I never know if its supposed to be a blessing or a curse to live in interesting times. But I have to believe this RSS is entering maybe the most interesting time in its long history.
The Danish Geodata Agency recently recreated the entire country of Denmark in Minecraft at a 1:1 scale. It’s one of the biggest Minecraft creations ever, made up of about 4000 billion brick and 1 terabyte of data. It was ingeniously built using the agency’s 3D elevation model and was meant to be used as a teaching tool.
Of course, players almost immediately began blowing it up.
They weren’t supposed to be able to. The Danish Geodata Agency, disabled the ability to use dynamite, but neglected to disable the minecart with dynamite item. According to The Register, players discovered this, set off explosives in several Danish towns, and built American tanks and flags on top of the ruins.
"We consider that as a nature of playing Minecraft – elements are broken down and new are being created,” Danish Geodata Agency spokesman Chris Hammeken told The Register. “Therefore we will not reboot the demonstration of Denmark in Minecraft. But occasionally we will rebuild minor areas if buildings are removed and nothing new is being created."
You can download the Denmark map in sections from the Danish Geodata Agency’s website. So far it’s been quite popular, with over 200,000 downloads.
"We are very happy to see so many players around the world creating fancy nice things and have fun," Hammeken said.
No one likes seeing distracted drivers on the road, but Jason Humphreys went a step too far (several, really) in trying to combat the problem. Florida hasn't yet outlawed talking on the phone while driving, so for two years, Humphreys carried a powerful cellphone jammer in his car during the daily commute to work. The jammer crippled cell reception for those around him along a stretch of Interstate 4.
Humphreys' goal was likely to prevent nearby motorists from placing a call, sending a text, or checking their Facebook feed while driving. But as the FCC angrily points out, he also may have unknowingly disrupted "first-responder communications" such as 911 calls. Cell jammers are illegal in the United States — largely because it's easy for them to get in the way of emergency calls. The commission says Humphreys now faces $48,000 in fines for the reckless stunt.
And he almost got away with it. It wasn't Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint that caught on to the problem. Instead, MetroPCS eventually noticed that reception was flatlining along the same point of I-4 twice each day. Once the FCC became aware of the situation, it used "sophisticated interference detection techniques" to track the problem down to Humphreys and his Toyota Highlander. When officers finally pulled him over, it didn't take long to confirm their suspicions. As they approached Humphreys' car, officers immediately noticed that their radios lost all contact with dispatch. The FCC is using the unfortunate case to remind consumers that using a jammer is "illegal under any circumstances" and can also result in jail time — though it seems Humphreys only needs to worry about the damage to his bank account.
People buy Nintendo hardware primarily for one reason: Nintendo games. From Pokemon to Mario Kart, the company has built some of gaming's best experiences over the years. But in between those increasingly infrequent tentpole releases, the company also makes a number of smaller, less-heralded games that help make the wait for the next Zelda more tolerable. Today Nintendo is releasing both Mario Golf: World Tour and Kirby Triple Deluxe on its 3DS handheld, two games that show that even when the company is struggling, it still knows how to make amazing games.
The Mario Golf series has always been a bit of an outlier, with console and handheld versions that offer wildly different experiences. If you played Mario Golf on the Nintendo 64 or Gamecube, you got an outlandish arcade-style experience in the vein of Mario Kart, complete with power-ups and insane courses. Meanwhile, the handheld titles almost felt like role playing games, with an actual plot that carried through a single-player campaign. The new World Tour serves as sort of a bridge between these two game types.
Even when Nintendo is struggling, it still knows how to make amazing games
There isn't exactly a story to play through, but World Tour's single-player mode features an expansive castle to explore filled with plenty of Mario characters to chat with and a pro shop where you can buy new gear. You play as your Mii avatar, and as you win tournaments you'll unlock new courses, though there are surprisingly few to play through. But while the story mode might not hold your attention like it did in previous games, there's still plenty to do. World Tour offers surprisingly engaging online and multiplayer modes, including tournaments where you can upload your best score to compete with other players, and online and local play with up to four friends.
Arcade sports games aren't exactly new, but what makes it all work is just how fun the game is to play. The controls are simple but offer a good amount of depth, as you can control not only the power and placement of your shot but also the spin. For the most part it controls the same as in past games, but the big touchscreen buttons make everything a bit easier to manage. As you start to deal with tough terrain and weather, these details become increasingly important. And of course, there are the power-ups: you can use fire flowers to destroy obstacles, or the all-powerful Bullet Bill to barrel directly to the hole. You won't use them often but they give the game a distinctly Mario feel.
Power-ups give the game a distinctly 'Mario' feel
Kirby, meanwhile, has always been one of the lesser known characters in the Nintendo universe. He's cute and cuddly, but he's never really starred in a must-have, system-selling game. Triple Deluxe is quite possibly his best excursion yet. It's a side-scrolling platform game, but unlike Super Mario the appeal isn't the challenge the game provides, but all of the crazy things you can do in it. Kirby's main shtick is that he can swallow enemies and absorb their powers, and Triple Deluxe offers dozens of different variations on this. You can spew fire, become a spear wielding fighter, or even turn into a rock with the press of a button. Some powers are more useful than others, and it's a lot of fun to play around with them to see what they do — and it doesn't hurt that putting Kirby in a cowboy hat or knight's helmet makes him look absolutely adorable. You'll use all of these powers to beat up bad guys, navigate jumps, solve environmental puzzles, and uncover secrets hidden throughout the game's many levels.
New this time around is what seems like a game-breaking power-up: the hypernova skill, which lets Kirby consume almost everything in his path. You can swallow trains and buses and move gigantic boulders around. It's a power that has the potential to make Kirby too strong and remove what little challenge is in the game, but instead of being overpowered, hypernova is turned into a clever puzzle-solving tool. You'll use it to move massive objects around the environment to solve puzzles, while you can swallow up others that are blocking your way. One level has you moving the heads of gigantic snowmen around so that you can place them on the right body, others have you swallowing huge missiles and firing them back at your opponents.
But even though the game isn't particularly hard — a few worlds in and I've only died a few times, and most of those came during one boss fight — the game is so lively and full of fun things to do that this never really bothered me. Whether it's a fun-house mirror that lets you see invisible enemies or auto-firing cannons that let you take out enemies lingering in the background, Triple Deluxe is constantly throwing new and interesting gameplay ideas at you. It never feels like you're doing one thing for very long.
There's no reason for either of these games to be special
Triple Deluxe also offers two surprisingly in-depth mini-games in addition to its main campaign. There's a fighting game that's essentially a dialed-down version of Super Smash Bros., with the key difference being that the only character you can play as is Kirby, but outfitted with any one of his many special powers. Rounding out the package is a music-and-platform-game hybrid that has you bouncing on drums in time to the music, while trying to make it to the end of the stage.
There's no reason for either of these games to be particularly special. There's a seemingly unending supply of quirky, colorful platform games out there, and arcade sports titles are frequently terrible. But when Nintendo lavishes a game with clever ideas and its very particular attention to detail, it turns into something special no matter the kind of game. Neither the new Kirby nor the new Mario Golf will go down among the best titles Nintendo has ever made — especially when put up against the likes of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds or Super Mario 3D World — but the amazing thing is that Nintendo's B games are still among the best games on the market.
Mario Golf: World Tour and Kirby Triple Deluxe are both available in the Nintendo 3DS today.
"[Gates] has been regularly offloading his ownership in the company over the years and using a large percentage of those earnings to back philanthropic efforts."
The man who built Microsoft is no longer its largest shareholder. After selling off 4.6 million shares on April 30th, Bill Gates is now positioned behind former CEO Steve Ballmer as the company's largest stakeholder. Ballmer owns 333.2 million shares of Microsoft, a massive stockpile acquired during his 33-year tenure in Redmond. Gates, on the other hand, now has 330.1 million shares. The co-founder has been regularly offloading his ownership in the company over the years and using a large percentage of those earnings to back philanthropic efforts.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been Gates' primary focus since leaving the role of Microsoft CEO and chairman. But he'll now be spending more time back at the company as an advisor and to lend his support to current boss Satya Nadella. As for Ballmer, he gave a farewell speech that was equal parts passionate and memorable back in September. Ballmer still sits on Microsoft's board, and he'll likely hold onto the top shareholder position for the foreseeable future. "I cherish my Microsoft ownership, and look forward to continuing as one of Microsoft’s largest owners," he said in August. Steve Ballmer has a net worth of $18.9 billion.
So not only is this (via Miki800) the “brick” style Game Boy, but artist Vadu Amka put a brick texture on the console with resin. I love the ivy crawling up the Game Boy wall, and the Triforce scratched into it.
Snapchat, the photo messaging app beloved of cheeky monkeys everywhere, has just undergone a major transformation. Self-destructing messages are still at the core of what it does, but the iOS and Android apps are being updated today to also handle instant messaging and live video chats -- just swipe to the right from the main camera screen and you'll see a list of your friends, allowing you to chat with them using these more traditional methods.
Texts are wiped by default when you back out of the chat screen, except for any that you deliberately tap to make the app remember them. Video chats, meanwhile, are ephemeral by their very nature: A throbbing blue icon pops up to tell you when a friend is paying attention to your chat (as opposed to the general "online" status used by other messaging apps), and you press and hold this to open up a one-way video stream of your beautiful nakedness self. If your friend wants to, they can do the same in order to make it a two-way thing, and both sides can use gestures to quickly flip between their back- and front-facing cameras. Overall, these changes constitute a big expansion to what Snapchat can do, but they cleverly avoid changing what Snapchat is. The upgrade could well take the app to new heights, in which case Zuckerberg might just have to up his alleged offer to buy it out.
Sony is warning shareholders to expect poor financial results for its fiscal year ending March 31, 2014. The electronics giant previously expected to pull in an operating income of 80 billion yen ($782 million) over the financial year, but is today adjusting that figure down to just 26 billion yen ($254 million).
The sharp reduction — the new operating income estimates are 68 percent down from a February forecast — can be attributed to a pair of somewhat unexpected events. Roughly 30 billion yen ($293 million) of the drop is due to "additional expenses" from Sony's exit from the PC business. The company announced it's to sell its PC division to a Japanese investment fund earlier this year.
Blu-ray is dying faster than expected
The second charge is due to what Sony calls "demand for physical media contracting faster than anticipated," especially in Europe. Because of this, Sony says it does not believe the business will generate "sufficient cash flow in the future to recover the carrying amount of long-lived assets." It anticipates an impairment charge on those assets, and a second charge on the overall value of its disc manufacturing business, which will amount to 25 billion yen ($245 million).
Blu-ray was officially introduced in 2006, backed by Sony and other manufacturers, and briefly battled against competing "next-generation" format HD-DVD. Buoyed by widespread adoption thanks to integration with the PlayStation 3, the popularity of Sony's format of choice saw HD-DVDs die without trace.
Winning this battle required heavy investment from Sony, an investment that it expected to recoup with years of strong sales. Instead of the market moving from DVD to Blu-ray, consumers began to embrace downloads from Apple's iTunes service and streaming from sites like Netflix and Hulu. Although Blu-ray is integrated with some Windows laptops, it was never offered by Apple — Steve Jobs famously called the format a "bag of hurt." With the rise of movie streaming and downloads, Sony is now accepting that its disc business is not worth as much as it hoped.
Sony will give a full rundown of its financial performance over the past year in two weeks. Its revenues from operations are likely to actually be higher than originally expected — the new forecast adds some 70 billion yen ($685 million) to the previous figure — but the company still expects to book a net loss for the year.
The Old Testament is full of examples of chiasmus, which is a figure of speech used in ancient times to emphasize balance. It lists a bunch of ideas or things and then repeats each of them in reverse order. It’s often not an identical repetition. It frequently uses the opposite of what came before or something similar to it.
Here’s a simple chiasmus I came up with to show you what it looks like:
A. The cat was heavy
B. She ate too much food
C. Something had to change
B. I gave her less food to eat
A. Now she’s less heavy
The first and last lines are similar, the second and fourth lines are opposite but related, and the third line is the turning point that links the ideas contained in the chiasmus.
Why am I giving a grammar lesson? Because I’ve noticed this same pattern used in films – a Cinematic Chiasmus, if you will. That shouldn’t be too surprising. Good storytelling involves setting up ideas and then paying them off over the course of the story. But some films have second halves that so closely mirror their first halves that it makes them truly breathtaking to behold once you notice their chiasmus at work.
RoboCop (1987) is the first film I reviewed on this website, so it’s fitting that it should be the first that I talk about here. Get ready to see how RoboCop is an almost perfectly symmetrical film.
The Chiasmus
First of all, I’ll write out the chiasmus in the film’s sequence of events:
A. Main title
B. Media Break 1
C. Main character identifies himself as Murphy
D. OCP Junior Executive Kenny is killed after holding a gun in a meeting
E. Bob Morton goes over Dick Jones’ head to initiate the RoboCop Program
F. Clarence Boddicker makes his debut
G. Car chase with Boddicker and his cohorts
H. Partners Alex Murphy and Anne Lewis separate to take on Boddicker’s gang
I. RoboCop is born and he tests his abilities at a shooting range
J. RoboCop causes property damage in the name of law and order
K. Media Break 2
L. Lewis reminds RoboCop who he really is
M. RoboCop visits the home where he lived
N. RoboCop hunts for Boddicker
O. Boddicker reveals he’s working for Jones
P. RoboCop gets shot at by a lot of drug dealers in a warehouse
Q. RoboCop arrests Boddicker
Q. RoboCop attempts to arrest Jones
P. RoboCop gets shot at by a lot of cops in a parking garage
O. Boddicker gets another assignment from Jones
N. Boddicker gets a tracking device to hunt RoboCop down
M. RoboCop hides at the steel mill where he died
L. RoboCop sees his own face for the first time
K. Media Break 3 (Note: This is the only thing that’s out of order. It actually takes place where O is)
J. The bad guys cause property damage in the name of chaos
I. RoboCop fixes his targeting system
H. RoboCop and Lewis split up to take on Boddicker’s gang once again
G. Car chase with Boddicker
F. Boddicker is killed
E. RoboCop plays a recording of Jones saying, “I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake”
D. Jones is killed after holding the same gun Kenny held in a meeting
C. Main character again identifies himself as Murphy
Now let’s go through each of these points to see their similarities in greater depth.
A. Main Title
This is pretty straightforward. The movie is bookended by its title. “RoboCop” is the first thing we see. No “A film by Paul Verhoeven” or “Orion Presents” preceding it. And “ROBOCOP” is the last thing we see before the end credits roll.
B. Media Break
In the first Media Break, we learn that a police officer is in critical condition after a gun battle with Clarence Boddicker. Plus, OCP Senior President Dick Jones says of the cops who are threatening to strike, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” In the final Media Break, which was deleted from the final cut of the film, Officer Anne Lewis is shown to be recovering after a gun battle with Boddicker. She repeats Jones’ line from her hospital bed.
C. Main Character’s Identity
When Alex Murphy arrives at his new precinct, he tells the Police Chief, “Hi. Murphy, transferring in from Metro South.” At the end of the film, when the Head of OCP asks for his name, he replies, “Murphy.” It’s a subtle thing, but it’s meaningful because it shows how RoboCop has regained his humanity by returning to his level of self-identity from the start of the film.
D. OCP Executive Killed During a Meeting
In the first demonstration of ED-209, a junior executive on the OCP Board points a gun at the giant robot and is promptly shot to pieces, landing on a scale model of the planned Delta City. In the final scene, a desperate Dick Jones uses that same gun to take the president of OCP hostage. However, RoboCop soon shoots Jones many times until he falls outside the building.
E. Bob Morton and Dick Jones
An ambitious junior executive named Bob Morton literally goes around Jones to pitch his idea for RoboCop to the Old Man after Jones’ ED-209 demonstration fails spectacularly. Jones gives Morton a murderous look as Morton walks off. Later, when RoboCop is asked for evidence that Jones is guilty of murder, he simply provides testimony from Jones himself saying, “I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake.” His mistake, of course, was making Jones look bad in front of the Old Man.
F. Clarence Boddicker’s Introduction and Farewell
The first time we see Clarence Boddicker, he’s angry at his cohort for frying the money they stole, and he gets violent. The last time we see him, he’s angry at Lewis for frying his last henchman, and he again gets violent.
G. Car Chase with Boddicker and His Cohorts
Murphy and his new partner Lewis engage in a high-speed pursuit of Boddicker and his henchmen. Boddicker kills a wounded member of his team by throwing him out of his van, bringing the chase to a sudden halt. Later, Lewis pursues Boddicker in another car chase. Boddicker accidentally kills one of his wounded team members, which leads to an unexpected end to the pursuit.
H. Partners Split Up
After finding Boddicker’s abandoned van, Murphy and Lewis go in different directions to try to find his gang members. Lewis is wounded and unable to help Murphy until it’s too late and he’s been killed. Later, Lewis drives a car while RoboCop draws the bad guys’ fire on foot. She gets shot by Boddicker and she’s unable to warn RoboCop in time to prevent him from getting crushed by falling metal beams.
I. RoboCop at the Shooting Range
One of the first things RoboCop does after being created is test his aiming ability at a police firing range. He hits dead center with every shot. After taking heavy damage, his targeting system is off by a few inches. Lewis helps him correct it so he’s perfectly accurate once more.
J. Causing Property Damage
His first night on the job, RoboCop causes a lot of property damage in the name of serving the public trust and protecting the innocent. On the night that the Detroit Police Force goes on strike, the city’s criminals cause a lot of property damage in the name of chaos and self-gratification.
K. More Media Break
The second Media Break focuses primarily on RoboCop and how he is on his way to eliminating crime in Old Detroit. The third Media Break focuses on the Detroit Police Force’s impending strike, which will cause crime to skyrocket in the city.
L. “Murphy, It’s You”
At her first opportunity, Lewis stops RoboCop and says, “Murphy, it’s you.” This reveals his real name, which he had forgotten. Later, RoboCop removes his helmet, revealing his face, which he hadn’t seen since his death. Lewis says, “It’s really good to see you again, Murphy.”
M. RoboCop Goes Back and Tries to Remember His Family
After learning of his own murder, RoboCop visits the old home and finds it abandoned. He has a few flashes of memories of his wife and son, but nothing substantial enough to rekindle his old self. After surviving another attempt on his life, RoboCop hides out at the abandoned factory where Murphy was killed. He laments to Lewis about his family, “I can feel them… but I can’t remember them.”
N. Predators Hunting Their Prey
RoboCop goes to a night club to find a member of Boddicker’s gang who can lead him to the crime lord’s hideout so he can kill Boddicker. Later, Jones gives Boddicker a tracking device to lead him to RoboCop’s hideout so Boddicker can kill him.
O. Boddicker Working with Jones
Boddicker shows up at Morton’s home and tells his girlfriends to leave. Then Boddicker plays a recorded message from Jones, showing that he works for Jones. Later, he goes to Jones’ office and hits on his receptionist, who not so subtly tells him to get lost. Then he gets another assignment from Jones to take out Morton’s creation, RoboCop.
P. RoboCop Survives a Firing Squad
When RoboCop finds Boddicker, he’s greeted by more than a dozen bad guys all firing bullets at him. He’s unharmed by their attack and kills almost all of them. Later, RoboCop is heavily damaged by ED-209’s guns and then he faces more than a dozen cops who mercilessly fire on him. He’s weaponless, so he can’t fire back and he barely survives the ordeal.
Q. RoboCop’s Arrests
The turning point of the movie is when RoboCop arrests Boddicker. Up ‘til then, he’s been indestructible and able to handle anything that comes his way. But after throwing Boddicker through several glass windows, RoboCop is about to crush his throat when he’s reminded that he’s a cop. His programming takes over and denies him the ability to kill Boddicker. He arrests the criminal instead. Then, when RoboCop confronts Jones, he’s prevented from arresting him by his programming. And RoboCop gets knocked through several glass doors/windows by ED-209.
Seeing Double
I have no idea if the makers of RoboCop intended for it to be so symmetrical. The fact that they accomplished this feat while still making a fast-paced action film that never feels like it’s repeating itself is simply amazing. It shows that it’s possible to make a work of art, even when making a movie with a silly title and in a genre that usually doesn’t call for much depth.
This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.
You don't have a Wii U yet, right? You're forgiven, and far from unique (in that respect, anyway -- you're a unique snowflake otherwise). Should the eighth entry in the Mario Kart series pique your interest, Nintendo's got a pretty fantastic bundle arriving at the end of May with a copy of the game, an extra Wii Remote Plus gamepad, and a free download of one of four games. All that stuff comes together in one box for $329.99 -- a pretty great deal considering the Wii U system in the box costs $300 by itself!
Head below for a new trailer for Mario Kart 8, as well as more on why Nintendo would offer a brand new game for free alongside its console.
The price isn't a measure of Nintendo trying to save you dough, but one of a company struggling to make its game console relevant against growing competition from Sony and Microsoft. The PlayStation 4's sales are already outpacing the Wii U, at 7 million consoles compared to Nintendo's 5.86 million (as of Dec. 31 2013); Xbox One isn't far behind at 5 million.
With major third-party publishers like EA and Ubisoft largely abandoning the Wii U, Nintendo's leaning on first-party software to sell the system. And that's where this Spring's Mario Kart 8 comes in, the latest entry in a series going back to the Super Nintendo era. Like Microsoft offering Titanfall bundled in with Xbox One, Nintendo is bundling a major, exclusive release with its console, and taking a hit on profits from game sales in favor of putting more Wii Us in more living rooms. The hope is, in the long run, more consoles in homes means more game / accessory sales (which is where the real money is for Nintendo).
The company also announced this week that it's going to (once again) skip holding a press conference at E3, instead opting to host a Nintendo Direct video stream.
Every year, phones and tablets get better, and more of you are starting to use your mobile devices not just to view, but also to create and edit content. And while the Drive app is a convenient place to store your stuff, we want to make it easier for you to quickly find, edit and create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on the go. Starting today, you can download new, standalone mobile apps for Docs and Sheets—with Slides coming soon. Need to find a spreadsheet? Go to the Sheets app. Need to create a document? Go to the Docs app. They’re all right there at your fingertips.
When you open the new apps, you’ll see your most recently edited files, which means less time searching and scrolling. The apps also come with offline support built in, so you can easily view, edit and create files without an Internet connection. Now, if you have a brilliant idea for a best-selling novel while traipsing through the Amazonian rainforest (or you know, something more probable, like during flight takeoff)...no problem. You can jot down your idea in the Docs app on your phone, even when you’re offline.
You can get the apps on Google Play [Docs] [Sheets] and in the App Store [Docs] [Sheets]. If you don’t have time now, over the next few days you’ll be prompted to download the apps when you go to edit or create a document or spreadsheet in your Drive app. And of course, you’ll still be able to use the Drive app to view and organize all of your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos and more.
So enjoy the Amazon—we’re looking forward to buying that novel someday. And in the meantime, just remember: even if a crocodile eats your phone, your files are safe in the cloud!
Google's inexpensive dongle can do a lot of things. Whether it be streaming music or a variety of video programming, the Chromecast is capable of handling it all -- and don't forget live TV is coming soon, too. But while having these entertainment options is nice, sometimes you have to be, you know, productive. Thankfully, it looks like you can start using the $35 dongle to send some of your work to a separate screen near you.
As spotted by Android Police, Google has quietly added an option within Drive that lets you push your Presentation to Chromecast. We looked into it ourselves and can confirm that said feature is indeed there, via the "Present on another device" menu. Technically, you could already do something similar by simply casting the entire browser, but this gives you an alternative that's actually optimized for Presentations. And don't be surprised by the fact there hasn't been a formal announcement, since Google's been known to do things unexpectedly from time to time. Either way, you can give it a try now -- just be sure to have the Cast extension installed, as you'll need that in order for this to work.
My daughter—age 4.5—maintains she wants a billion-story building. It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome.
Keira, via Steve Brodovicz, Media, PA
Keira,
If you make a building too big, the top part is heavy and it squishes the bottom part.
Have you ever tried to make a tower of peanut butter? It's easy to make a little tiny one, like a blobby castle on a cracker. It will be strong enough to stay standing. But if you try to build a really big castle, the whole thing smushes flat like a pancake.
The same thing happens with buildings. The buildings we make are strong, but we couldn't make one that went all the way up to space, or the top part would squish the bottom part.
We can make buildings pretty tall. The tallest buildings are almost 1 kilometer tall, and we could probably make buildings 2 or even 3 kilometers tall if we wanted, and they would still be able to stand up under their own weight. Higher than that might be tricky.
But there would be other problems with a tall building besides weight.
One issue would be wind. The wind up high is very strong, and buildings have to be very strong to stand up against the wind.
Another big problem would be, surprisingly, elevators. Tall buildings need elevators, since no one wants to climb hundreds of flights of stairs. If your building has lots of floors, you need lots of different elevators, since there would be so many people trying to come and go the same time. If you make a building too tall, the whole thing gets taken up by elevators and there's no space for regular rooms.
Maybe you can think of a way to get people to their floors without having too many elevators. Maybe you could make a giant elevator that takes up 10 floors. Or you could make fast elevators that work like roller coasters. Or you could fly people up to their rooms with hot air balloons. Or you could launch them with catapults.
Elevators and wind are big problems, but the biggest problem would be money.
To make a building really tall, someone has to spend a lot of money, and no one wants a really tall building enough to pay for it. A building many miles tall would cost billions of dollars. A billion dollars is a lot of money! If you had a billion dollars, you could rent a giant spaceship, save all the world's endangered lemurs, give a dollar to everyone in the US, and still have some left over. Most people don't think giant towers a few miles tall are important enough to spend a lot of money on.
If you got really rich, so you could pay for a tower to space yourself, and solved all those engineering problems, you'd still have problems making a tower a billion stories tall. A billion stories is just too many.
A big skyscraper might have about 100 floors, which means it's as tall as 100 little houses.
If you stacked 100 skyscrapers on each other to make a mega-skyscraper, it would reach halfway to space:
This skyscraper would still only have 10,000 floors, which is way less than your billion floors! Each of those 100 skyscrapers would have 100 floors, so the whole mega-skyscraper would have 100 times 100 is 10,000 floors.
But you said you wanted a skyscraper with 1,000,000,000 floors. Let's stack 100 mega-skyscrapers to make a mega-mega-skyscraper:
The mega-mega-skyscraper would stick out so far from the Earth that spaceships would crash into it. If the space station were heading toward the tower, they could use its rockets to steer away from it.[1]They'd probably get pretty grumpy after having to dodge your tower repeatedly, so you might want to launch fuel and snacks out the window with a rail gun as they go by. The bad news is that space is full of broken spaceships and satellites and pieces of junk, all flying around at random. If you build a mega-mega-skyscraper, spaceship parts will eventually smash into it.
Anyway, a mega-mega-skyscraper is only 100 times 10,000 = 1,000,000 floors. That's still a lot smaller than the 1,000,000,000 that you want!
Let's make a new skyscraper by stacking up 100 mega-mega-skyscrapers, to make a mega-mega-MEGA-skyscraper:
The mega-mega-MEGA-skyscraper would be so tall that the top would just barely brush against the Moon.
But it would only be 100,000,000 floors! To get to 1,000,000,000 floors, we have to stack 10 mega-mega-MEGA-skyscrapers on top of each other, to make one Keira-skyscraper:
The Keira-skyscraper would be pretty close to impossible to build. You would have to keep it from crashing into the Moon, being pulled apart by the Earth's gravity, or falling over and smashing into the planet like the giant meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
But some engineers have an idea sort of like your tower—it's called a space elevator. It's not quite as tall as yours (the space elevator would only reach partway to the Moon), but it's close!
Some people think we can build a space elevator, but other people think it's a crazy idea. We can't build one yet because there are some problems we don't know how to solve, like how to make the tower strong enough and how to send power up it to run the elevators. If you really want to build a gigantic tower, you can find out more about some of the problems they're working on, and eventually become one of the people coming up with ideas to solve them. Maybe, someday, you could build a giant tower to space.
I'm pretty sure it won't be made of peanut butter, though.
John Oliver returned to late night comedy on Sunday with the premiere of Last Week Tonight, his long-awaited news program on HBO. And he was in good form. In the course of his first half hour, the host addressed a week of controversy surrounding America's newly prominent racists and endeavored to make Americans care about the vastly important Indian election, setting himself apart from most American broadcasts in a truly refreshing way. He even took former NSA director Keith Alexander to task for the agency's bulk surveillance program, calling it "The only agency in government that really listens." Check it out.
It's been a while since Google last provided an update on its self-driving car, and today it's detailing just what the project has been up to over the last year and a half. The project is now focusing on the car's ability to drive through cities — not just freeways — a task that requires it to be able to sense and consider everything from complex intersections to passing pedestrians. Google says that its self-driving car can now detect "hundreds of distinct objects" at once, including stop signs held by crossing guards and turn signals made by cyclists.
Google's car has learned to handle thousands of city situations over two years
The self-driving car is able to adapt to changes in the road too. In a video, Google shows how the car can detect closed lanes and automatically begin to merge into an open one, or see a vehicle parked on the shoulder and move out wider into its own lane to avoid it. The self-driving car's city testing has occurred in Google's hometown of Mountain View, California. Overall, Google's vehicles have now traveled 700,000 miles on the road — up from 300,000 miles in August of 2012.
Google says that it's come a long way over those miles. "Thousands of situations on city streets that would have stumped us two years ago can now be navigated autonomously," project director Chris Urmson writes in a blog post. Urmson suggests that the car may still be limited in where it can travel, however. Before it moves on to another town, Urmson writes that it'll first need to be taught to take on more streets in Mountain View and tested there.
The Internet is a brilliant invention. It’s complex, elegant, and took some of the brightest minds on Earth to create. But at heart it is a dumb network. The genius of the Internet is that the actual transport of your data is completely neutral by design. The intelligence is in the applications that run on what is a set of dumb pipes.
Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon are not dumb. And they aren’t interested in owning dumb networks. They think that because they own some of infrastructure they should be allowed to make it more intelligent. They also think Google, Netflix, and Microsoft will pay for a supercharged, tier one service that moves their packets along faster. Upstart Internet companies that can’t pay extra will have to settle for slower service.
Net neutrality is the reason we have this wonderfully dumb network. While it might not be dead, it is mortally wounded. The FCC says it is not killing Net neutrality rules, but will change them later this year. They only promise that telecom companies will have to act in a “commercially responsible manner.”
Right. Like they always have.
The kind of network intelligence they are proposing kills innovation. When the Internet is neutral, the services that run on it have to be smarter. They have to be more clever and user-friendly than their competitors. When money becomes the differentiator, innovation is devalued and incumbents have all the power.
No one is going to try a new music service that keeps dropping songs because Pandora is hogging the bandwidth. No one is even going to think about launching a new online movie service if Netflix and Amazon have access to the fastest pipes.
Service providers claim they’re making the Internet more robust and powerful. When AT&T had monopoly control over the entire phone system, they made a system that was hyper-robust, intelligent, and powerful. But while they hardly ever dropped a call, there was very little innovation for the user for more than a century. We had rotary, landline phones in 1890 and rotary, landline phones in 1990. Plus maybe call waiting and voicemail.
The only solution is more competition. How many options do you have for Internet access? If you want a different Internet provider where you live, who would you call? The cable company? Maybe DSL?
If that remains the case, we will soon have gatekeepers with the unchecked power at every door.
Let’s stop pretending the Internet is still a beautiful, pure and elegant technology that leaked out of a government research lab and magically gave everyone free access to a better life. They own the Internet now.
But there are lots of ways to change the dynamic. For one, we have to force monopoly networks to open their networks to competition. Your cable company can’t be the only service provider to use its fiber cables. Those networks are a public utility. They have to be forced to lease it out to competition. If the networks are going to control what we see, we can’t let them have monopoly control.
It will take a lot of time and hard work to change the rules for the better. But we can start today. We can still fight to keep the net dumb. Start by signing a petition. There is still time to come out swinging for neutrality. http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home
Koush has been busy since leaving Cyanogen Inc. to spend more time working on his various projects. A new update for AllCast is set to roll out soon with an interesting new feature. Users with a Fire TV will be able to stream video to the TV, but route the audio through the phone only. Why would you want to do this? It's private listening mode. 
