What the hell is charming about spending your entire day within earshot of another person? I mean if you want that, you can have it in Los Angeles, sure.
whoever57 writes "On Saturday, Oracle Team USA and Team New Zealand will begin racing for the America's Cup in the amazing AC72 boats. However, the Oracle team starts with a significant handicap. It was recently discovered that members of Oracle Team USA made illegal changes to the boats used in the America's Cup Series (which is sailed in the smaller AC45 boats). After a hearing on Friday, the International Jury has decided on the penalty: Team Oracle will have to pay a fine and sail without some team members. More significantly, they lose two points before starting the America's Cup races against Team New Zealand. A tiny amount of weight had been added to the kingpost, in violation of the measurement rules for the class. This was reported to the measurement committee some weeks ago after its discovery by boatbuilders working for America's Cup Regatta Management (ACRM), not members of Oracle Team USA."
Namco Bandai Games revealed in this week's issue of Famitsu magazine that a fourth game in the Dynasty Warriors: Gundam series (called Gundam Musou in Japan) is in the works for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita.
Called Shin Gundam Musou in Japanese, the new title marks a return to a more realistic graphical style for the series after Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3's cel-shaded look. This will allow for things like spot damage on Mobile Suits, and you'll get ample chance to see this in action, given that NBGI is planning for over 100 MS units to be playable between Official Mode (which recreates the original story from several Gundam anime) and Ultimate Mode (which features an all-new story).
New units include the RX-0 Banshee from Gundam UC and the GAT-X105 Strike Gundam and GAT-X202 Aegis Gundam both from Gundam SEED. In addition, Shin Gundam Musou will feature controllable Mobile Armors, mech units that are generally much larger than your typical MS unit.
The new Gundam game, currently pegged at 80 percent complete, is due out Dec. 19 in Japan. The PS3 version will cost 7980 yen (approximately $80), while the Vita game will go for 6980 yen (about $70).
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Chris Christie picks wife over Rand Paul USA TODAY SHARECONNECT 80 TWEETCOMMENTEMAILMORE. For Gov. Chris Christie — and potentially any married man out there — there was no question whom he'd be spending time with when a conflict arose on his schedule: his wife of two decades.
I watched Jurassic Park the other week (spoilers: it’s still awesome), and the mixture of large lizards and modern tech seems like the appropriate primer for Planet Explorer’s mix and match world. The single and multiplayer RPG’s strength is how it ties user-generated content into the fantasy setting. You can build loads of impressive things in the editor, and tool around the world. But these aren’t just mod tools for people to use willy-nilly: they’re worn into the fabric of the game’s quests, asking you to build things for actual mission reasons. The trailer below shows what magic can be woven from those voxels, turning your designs into monster scorching mega-blasters and wonky helicopters.
I think it’s time for me to replay this. The first time I tried there wasn’t much to do, but it looks like it’s filling up a bit as well. We’re at version 0.62, which sounds perfectly playable to me. Is anyone in it? Would the adventure part of it hold up to a beguilingly handsome Scotsman heading off in one direction in the hope of finding fun, or is it designed to keep players grinding and filling out their mission log?
David Cage, head of Beyond: Two Souls studio Quantic Dream, says that Microsoft turned down the chance to publish his company's PlayStation 3 hit Heavy Rain because it was "scared" of the potentially controversial storyline. Heavy Rain, which won a BAFTA award for Best Story in 2011, centers around a man's search for his abducted child, which Microsoft apparently took issue with.
"They were scared of the scandal."
"We had a very long talk and they loved [Quantic Dream's 2005 game] Fahrenheit, and they really wanted to do something with us," said Cage at a BAFTA event, in comments reported by Digital Spy. "They got scared by the fact that Heavy Rain was about kids being kidnapped, and they said, 'This is an issue, we want to change it.' Well, we could have kidnapped cats, it would be a different experience!"
Added Cage: "For me, that was a very interesting signal. It was like, you know what, I don't think we can work together, because you don't understand what I'm to achieve here. They were scared of the scandal and scared of what people may write and what people may think."
"It shouldn't be about blood and whatever, it should be about love."
Cage calls Microsoft a "great company" and insists he is not out to criticise the Xbox platform owner, but ultimately feels that Sony was more open to his ideas. "There should be a strong emotional experience, but it shouldn't be vulgar, it shouldn't be about blood and whatever, it should be about love," he says. "[Sony and Quantic Dream] could understand each other, and this is how Heavy Rain happened."
“We live in a country where politicians call rape a “gift from God” and suggest that women regularly lie about being raped. Where a group of young men in high school think so little of sexual assault that they thought it was fine—hilarious, even—to post pictures online of a passed out rape victim, and to live-tweet the rape, joking about the victim being urinated on. We live in a country where media as revered as The New York Times finds it necessary to describe an 11-year-old gang rape victim as “wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.” Where a woman can be fired because her boss finds her “irresistable” and a woman’s rape case falls flat because she isn’t married. It’s time to acknowledge that the rape epidemic in the United States is not just about the crimes themselves, but our own cultural and political willful ignorance. Rape is as American as apple pie—until we own that, nothing will change”
Obama wins Congress over on Syria. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote on a bipartisan authorization for military force in Syria, and is expected to back an intervention that would bar the use of US troops on the ground. Democrats and Republicans in the House also voiced support for President Obama’s “call to action.”
Obama in Sweden. The US president will spend the day in Stockholm—a hastily arranged visit that takes the place of a one-on-one Moscow meeting with Vladimir Putin, cancelled after Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden—en route to the G20 summit in St. Petersburg.
US economic data. The trade deficit for July is expected to have widened to $38.8 billion, and sales of new cars and light trucks are estimated to have jumped 17% year-on-year. The Federal Reserve’s “Beige Book” regional economic report will also be released.
Europe’s baby steps. Revised euro zone GDP confirmed that the region is out of recession. Data on imports, exports and retail sales will give further clues about the extent of the recovery.
Samsung’s chunky smart watch. The South Korean electronics giant will beat Apple to market with the launch of the Galaxy Gear. Leaked photos of the wearable device seem to confirm our reservations about smart watches.
Rosh Hashanah begins. Sunset today marks the start of the Jewish new year.
While you were sleeping
China said its economic slowdown was intentional. President Xi Jinping said he would “rather bring down the growth rate to a certain extent in order to solve the fundamental problems” that are holding back the economy. Meanwhile, a measure of China’s services activity reached a five-month high in August.
Toyota recalled 369,000 vehicles. The carmaker said two separate glitches in its hybrid SUV range had been identified, forcing it to recall vehicles in the US, Europe and Japan. No injuries or accidents have been reported.
Ryanair’s unhappy summer holidays. The Irish budget airline said a summer heatwave cut into earnings, and warned investors that full-year profits may come in at the lower end of its typical range, around 570 million ($750 million) to 600 million euros.
Australia beat the bulls. Its economy expanded 0.6% from the previous quarter, or 2.6% from a year earlier, offering momentum for the winner of this week’s election.
A good start for the European service sector. Spain grew for the first time since 2011, withMarkit’s index coming in at 50.4 in August, up from 48.5 in July. Data from the UK showed the strongest performance since 2006 at 60.5. A number above 50 indicates expansion rather than contraction, with a larger number meaning faster growth. More readings are expected throughout the day.
Yankee Candle sold for $1.75 billion. Consumer products maker Jarden is buying the scented candle company from private-equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners.
Hedge funds are piling into JC Penney and now own 21% percent of its stock after activist investor William Ackman dumped his shares. The funds include Glenview Capital Management, with a 9.1% stake, and Kyle Bass’ Hayman Capital Management, with 5.2%.
Cleveland kidnapper found hanged in his cell. Ariel Castro was sentenced in August to life without parole plus 1,000 years for imprisoning and raping three women over the course of a decade. He was found dead from an apparent suicide.
Jason Karaian on how European soccer clubs are the fiscal opposites of European governments. “If you take each country’s top league as a whole, net spending flips the common economic narrative on its head. Northern Europe shows a taste for aggressive deficit spending—led by England, with France and Germany doing their part—while the prudent periphery—Spain, Italy and Portugal—collects more than it pays out. Despite Madrid’s spending spree, on balance La Liga in Spain brought in the equivalent of $140 million more in fees than it spent on players.” Read more here.
America needs the Smithfield deal. The proposed takeover by China’s Shuanghui should be approved (paywall), in part to quell the suspicion that the US is hostile to Chinese companies.
The rich will get richer. Tighter US monetary policy will hurt poorer countries and help advanced economies.
The US is probably already attacking Syria. Obama has launched a lobbying blitz to persuade lawmakers to authorize missiles, but he needs no such permission for a cyber attack.
The father of the search engine is 404. Jonathan Fletcher didn’t get much of the credit for the world’s first web-crawling search engine.
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NAACP-KKK meeting in Wyo. believed to be a first Grand Island Independent A secret meeting between a representative of the Wyoming chapter of the NAACP and a Ku Klux Klan organizer ended with the Klan organizer paying $50 to join the civil rights organization, participants said. Saturday's meeting between Jimmy Simmons, ...
In the middle of a multiple-hour Senate hearing on the use of force in Syria, ex-presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was caught playing a poker game on his iPhone. The Washington Post photographer Melina Mara broke the news by reporting that the senator was "passing the time by playing poker on his iPhone during the hearing." Mara followed up shortly after with photographic evidence, as seen above. In reaction to being caught, McClain posted a tongue-in-cheek admission of guilt on Twitter. Later, he told CNN: "as much as I like to always listen in rapt attention constantly [to] remarks of my colleagues over a three-and-a-half-hour period, occasionally I get a little bored."
Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing - worst of all I lost!
(Est. 2013) "Internet.org is a global partnership between technology leaders, nonprofits, local communities and experts who are working together to bring the internet to the two thirds of the world's population that doesn't have it. Sharing tools, resources and best practices, Internet.org partners will explore solutions in three major opportunity areas: affordability, efficiency, and business models."
The founding members of internet.org are Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung.
Design by: Communication Design team at Facebook
Opinion/Notes: There is no information about the logo but it's a nice abstract icon that looks global-ish and serious. The type is also a welcome step up from Helvetica and all around the typography on the website is quite sophisticated. Digging it. Whatever it is.
Next month Nintendo will be releasing Pokémon X and Y, the sixth generation of the long-running monster battling series. And for those trainers who have amassed a huge lineup of pokémon over the years, the company just announced a new feature: a cloud storage service called Pokémon Bank. A downloadable app for the 3DS, Bank lets you store up to 3,000 creatures online for safe keeping. A sister app called Poké Transporter was also announced, which lets you transfer pokemon from previous DS games to the cloud as well, so that they can either be stored or transferred into the new game.
Both apps will be free to download, but Nintendo says the Bank service will come with as-yet-unannounced annual fee which "will allow the service to be maintained long-term so it can provide support for future Pokémon titles." A free trial will be available at launch. When Pokémon X and Y are released on October 12th, the number of available creatures to collect will jump past 700, and now you'll have no excuse not to catch 'em all.
AmiMoJo writes "The Ministry of Sound, a UK dance music brand, is suing Spotify because it has not removed users' playlists that mirror their compilation albums. The case will hinge on whether compilation albums qualify for copyright protection due to the selection and arrangement involved in putting them together. Spotify has the rights to stream all the tracks on the playlists in question, but the issue here is whether the compilation structure — the order of the songs — can be copyrighted."
Word surfaces of Fantagraphics' Don Rosa Library series! Interviews with Mort Walker and Ellen Forney! J.W. Rinzler on "The Star Wars"! "Geek therapists" use comics and superheroes in their practice! Plus more!
“The metaphor is strong and it hasn’t gone away. Chris Claremont was the one who decided that it was a full-on allegory for race and religion and sexuality. I’m a Jewish kid, and I have a multicultural family [two of Bendis’ daughters, one Ethiopian and one African-American, are adopted], and with that comes all sorts [...]
*rattles my chains outside your window* I AM THE GHOST OF CRITICAL THINKING AND TONIGHT YOU WILL BE VISITED BY THREE SPIRITS WHO WILL TEACH YOU TO CHECK FACTS BEFORE REBLOGGING THINGS
fuck yeah, hard femme!:
