Slashdot

All numbers are from the "sweeping change" of the 2006 election, which had a 37% voter turnout and gave us the 110th Congress, whose approval rating is now 11%.

For the House of Representatives:

• Number of incumbents who lost their race: 23
• Number of incumbents who retired, leaving their seat vacant (run for different office, "spend time with family," etc.): 32

For the Senate:

• Number of incumbents who lost their race: 6
• Number of incumbents who retired, leaving their seat vacant (run for different office, "spend time with family," etc.): 3

Focusing on House races where the incumbent faced at least one challenger whose name appeared on the ballot (i. e. not a write-in), discounting blank, scattered and overvotes:

• Total number of such races: 367
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 344 (94%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 64%

Focusing on those House incumbents up for re-election who had already served three full, consecutive terms (i. e. one full Senate term):

• Total number of all such races: 273
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 255 (93%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 64%

Same as above, but only in those states with a Senate race as well:

• Total number of all such races: 199
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 187 (94%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 64%

Same as above, but only those states where the Senate incumbent lost:

• Total number of all such races: 41
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 38 (93%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 63%

For comparison, Senate races where the incumbent faced at least one challenger whose name appeared on the ballot (i. e. not a write-in), discounting blank, scattered and overvotes:

• Total number of all such races: 29
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 23 (79%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 58%

This would seem to dispel any doubts concerning the power of gerrymandering in House elections. Even after taking into account the shorter terms of Representatives compared to Senators, the collection of incumbents will win 93% of the time, even when the voters in question are simultaneously choosing a new Senator. And with the approval rating sinking so low, we are close to the point where it is a mathematical impossibility to say that voters dislike Congress as a whole but still like their particular Representative.

I will soon look into those 32 retirees from the House to see how much truth there is to the adage that a Representative is more likely to be indicted than lose an election.

Guppy06 writes "Starting with volume 222 in December, Nintendo will no longer be in charge of its own dedicated magazine, Nintendo Power, instead handing the reins over to Future US, publisher of other gaming magazines such as PC Gamer, Official Xbox Magazine, and Playstation: The Official Magazine. Nintendo started Nintendo Power from its original "Nintendo Fun Club" back in 1988 and since then the magazine has been the official mouthpiece of the company to its fanbase, often being the medium used for new announcements, such as the development of the now-classic Game Boy and Super NES. Similarly, it seems Nintendo is no longer publishing its own video game guides, which were published under the Nintendo Power name; recent flagship titles such as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass only have Nintendo-authorized guides published by Prima available."

Guppy06 writes "After struggling with individual merchants in the British Isles for years years, European commissioners unanimously agreed that people in the UK and Ireland could continue to trade using Imperial units of measure rather than compel metrication, using solely Imperial for specific industries or uses (roads, beer, milk, precious metals) or a US-style dual-labeling for all others. EU Industry Commissioner Gunter Verheugen, who apparently pushed for this measure, is quoted as saying "When I looked into this matter it was obvious to me that there was no reason why imperial measures should go," and "I think up to that point nobody had really asked the obvious question which is 'Do we really need [to ban] it?'" Self-styled Metric Martyrs in the UK still need to contend with the compulsory metrication directives from their national government in London. In answer to disappointed metrication campaigners, an Associated Press article on the same subject says that Commissioner Verheugen suggests that it will aid with trade with the United States, which has no compulsory metrication and allows units similar to the Imperial system."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2431521.ece

Roland Piquepaille writes "Neptec Design Group, a Canadian company and a NASA prime contractor for 25 space missions, was kind enough to send me exclusive images of Endeavour's damaged tiles during its last take-off. So here are some of these pictures" The pictures are pretty amazing and make the urgency of this whole thing much more amazing.

Kraisch writes with a link to the Guardian website, which again revisits the subject of reconstructing the internet. This time the question isn't whether it should be done, but what should the goals of a redesign be? From the article: "'There's a real need to have better identity management, to declare your age and to know that when you're talking to, say, Barclays bank, that you're really doing so,' said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute. At the moment we are still using very clumsy methods to approach such problems. The result: last year alone, identity theft and online fraud cost British victims an estimated £414m, while one recent report claimed 93% of all email sent from the UK was spam ... Many ideas revolve around so-called "mesh networks", which link many computers to create more powerful, reliable connections to the internet. By using small meshes of many machines that share a pipeline to the net instead of relying on lots of parallel connections, experts say they can create a system that is more intelligent and less prone to attack."

Ah, Square-Enix, the Disney of the video game world.

We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems.

Maybe the statement about the Japanese market and the need for physical media is true, but we'd need to compare sales of VC games in Japan versus the rest of the world to find out. However, there is a whole world outside of Japan, one that has shown itself more than satisfied with the download model, and one that has yet to see two Dragon Quest games in any form.

As for the "billing issues," I'm assuming he's suggesting that most children don't have credit cards with which to buy these games. Well, how are these kids buying Square-Enix downloads for their mobile phones, then? And why can't they buy their games the same way I do: using cash to buy points cards?

It's safe to say that this statement is little more than a hand-wave to distract people from the real reason Square-Enix doesn't want to sell its bread and butter on the virtual Console: they're still charging a premium for remakes for other systems. After all, Final Fantasy for the PSP comes out next month.

And, ultimately, I foresee Square-Enix's greed here to be their downfall.

Let's consider Final Fantasy for a moment. The original game was released for the Famicom, and Nintendo did the grunt work of translating and publishing the game for the NES in other markets. As far as the Virtual Console is concerned, little else needs to be done with it other than upload it to the servers.

However, in recent years, Square-Enix has been publishing a number of remakes of the original game, where they updated the graphics and sound, tweaked the combat system to make it easier, and added some pre-rendered cutscenes in some versions. The first remake was for the WonderSwan Color, which included the game as a pack-in. The first taste of the remake that non-Japanese gamers had came with the PlayStation release of Final Fantasy Origins, in which the game was bundled with Final Fantasy II on the same disk. A similar scheme of combining the two games was used when they were released for the Game Boy Advance.

For gamers outside of Japan, Final Fantasy Origins for the PlayStation was worth the purchase as it came with a game that had never been released outside of Japan, Final Fantasy II. For me, at least, the Final Fantasy I remake was pretty and worth a quick playthrough, but I more enjoyed playing the first Final Fantasy game that involved character development.

And while I'd already played both games on the PlayStation, Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls for the Game Boy Advance promised me additional story arcs in Final Fantasy II. New dungeons in Final Fantasy I were, again, something worth playing through just to look at, but (at least in my opinion) certainly not enough to justify purchasing the game alone.

Now we have Square-Enix on the verge of releasing Final Fantasy I for the PSP. For those of us outside of Japan, this will be the first Final Fantasy remake in which I wasn't bundled with II. What will we be getting if we put down some money on yet another Final Fantasy remake?

• Some cutscenes, most (if not all) of which we've already seen on the PlayStation.
• Some extra art sketches, which probably wouldn't be enough to justify publishing a $10-$15 book of artwork for.
• A new dungeon, something that romhackers have been adding to Final Fantasy since before the WonderSwan Color.

All this on a UMD that will at least cost as much (probably more) as the Game Boy Advance cartridge that included a whole second game.

Sure, the game will likely sell reasonably well in Japan, but I for one won't be buying it, not for $30, and not for $15 after it inevitably hits the bargain bin, and I have a hard time seeing anybody outside Japan but the most rabid fanboy shelling out money for this particular remake.

The game will sit on the store shelf for a few months, but shelf space dedicated to the PSP is limited and it's surprising how quickly games disappear from those shelves (already it can be difficult to find Valkyrie Profile). As a guess, I'd say Square-Enix has about six months to actually make money off this game, before it starts to cost stores to stock this game rather than pay, and there are too many used copies in stores and on eBay for new copies to compete against.

A Virtual Console release of the original game, in its original form, certainly wouldn't look as lucrative, with its $5 price tag instead of $30+ for a PSP game. But unlike a PSP game, a VC game doesn't have to compete for shelf space: once it's for sale, it will always be available for purchase, allowing impulse buyers to buy on their own schedules rather than hoping that a customer's impulse will happen while the game is still on shelves (remember Valkyrie Profile).

On top of that, for $5, Square-Enix wouldn't have to try so hard to add content in the hopes of justifying the purchase price to buyers. Sure, often the additional content is enough to justify buying the game again in the mind of enthusiasts, but this isn't always the case, and this PSP remake itself seems to be destined to be one of the failures. And when you add up the costs of stamping the UMDs, printing the inserts, buying the advertising and actually shipping the game (on top of paying the programmers and artists), such remakes certainly have the potential to lose the company money as well as earn it. Not only are these costs all but non-existant for Virtual Console games, but Final Fantasy (at least) doesn't need any additional input from programmers, artists or translators. The only cost is bandwidth.

It's doubtful that anybody will be able to talk sense into Square-Enix at the moment, they likely don't yet see these remakes as a gamble compared to the sure thing of VC downloads. About the only way this is going to happen is if Square-Enix starts to lose money on these remakes while some competitor makes money on downloadable games. The ignonimity of watching downloads of Ys for the MSX (a system already on the VC in Japan) or Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System (if you can emulate a Genesis, you're more than half-way there) continue to give Falcom or Sega a steady revenue stream long after Square-Enix has ceased to make a dime off of new UMD sales of Final Fantasy should be shocking enough to get their attention.

Until then, why would I buy the PSP version of Final Fantasy when I could buy two Wii points cards instead?

Andy_R writes "Sony have finally committed themselves to a European launch date for the PS3, after disappointing European fans by not having the promised worldwide simultanious launch, then missing the lucrative Christmas period. The BBC are reporting that the console will arrive on the 23rd of March. We'll only be getting the 60Gb version at first, and it will be priced at 599 Euros or 425 pounds in Britain. At today's exchange rates, that's a wallet-busting $835.99!"

teeto writes "A New Zealand news site is reporting that hundreds of chickens have been found dead in east China and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a four-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog. The boy's father was ordered to pay 1800 yuan ($232USD) in compensation to the owner of the chickens."

Chabil Ha' writes "Ever woken up in the morning, only to be told that your no longer a citizen of your birth country? Many applying for a Canadian passport have been informed their chance to remain a citizen expired years ago because of an obscure provision in the Citizenship Act, a little-known law that applied between 1947 and 1977. Canadians without status would have to apply to become landed immigrants — a process that takes three years or more.

"I mean, it just defies logic. The system doesn't make any sense, so it's critical that we have a citizenship act that is in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the generosity of what Canadians believe.""

Pikoro writes "I have been working in the IT field for the past 20 years or so, and after getting hired by the largest financial company in the world, I thought I might have finally found a place to retire from.

However, after working here for about 6 months, I find myself, not exactly burnt out, but longing for a complete career field change.

It's not that doing IT related tasks aren't fun anymore, but they have become more "work" than "play" over the last few years.

Since all of my experience has been IT related, I'm not sure where I could go from here.

What would slashdot readers consider doing for a living after being in a single field for so long?"

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Slashdot story it was reported that "No Blu-ray disk manufacturer would make their disks because Sony doesn't want porn on Blu-ray (just as with Betamax)." Reports now indicate that this is false. "'There's no prohibition against adult content,' Lisa Gephardt, a spokeswoman for Sony Corp. of America....""

innocence18 writes "Microsoft has announced that it will be adding an "Extended Support" phase for both Windows XP Home and Media Center Editions. This brings the support life cycle of both products to 5 years mainstream (April 2009) and 5 years extended which matches the support policy of XP Professional."

An anonymous reader writes "If you're traveling with a GPS in your car to Switzerland, be very careful! As of January 10th, the Swiss authorities (ASTRA) have forbid the use of GPS systems in cars. They also banned the selling of car GPS units throughout the country.
The reason is that the software running on these devices reveal the location of traffic radars, through which less people have been fined in the recent years and thus Swiss authorities miss a lot of money. The controversial ban has been created a large commotion inside and outside the country, forcing the authorities to put an official document online [pdf — in Germans], with answers to most frequently asked questions.
GPS devices such as TomTom, Garmin, Mio, Navman, Medion, Route 66, Packard stand Ring, Sony and ViaMichelin are all in the banned list."

WienerPizza writes "Michael Sutton takes us on a tour of the Google blacklist, a list of suspected phishing sites. He finds that eBay, PayPal and Bank of America combined account for 63% of the active phishing sites. Amusingly, he also reveals that Yahoo! has a nasty habit of hosting phishing sites that harvest...you guessed it...Yahoo! credentials!"

duguk writes in with another reason to keep happy over Christmas. A new scientific study suggests that people who frequently experience positive emotions are less likely to catch colds. Psychologist Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University interviewed 193 healthy adults daily for two weeks and recorded the positive and negative emotions they had experienced each day. The researchers then exposed the volunteers to a cold or a flu virus. Those with "generally positive outlooks" reported fewer cold symptoms. From the article: "'We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk,' Cohen says... Although a positive emotional style bore no relation to whether participants became infected, it protected against the emergence of cold symptoms. For instance, among people infected by the influenza virus... 28 percent who often reported positive emotions developed coughs, congestion, and other cold symptoms, as compared with... 41 percent who rarely reported positive emotions."