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Comment I Went to This School (Score 1) 1054

I went to this school (quite a few years ago), and while infuriating, I don't find it surprising. Also, it wasn't just Ender's Game; the teacher also complained about the teacher reading "The Devil's Paintbox" by Victoria McKernan and "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case" by Agatha Christie: local newspaper.

The child had been disciplined by the teacher several times earlier in the year, so this is revenge by the parent.

Comment Kotkin is a close friend of Christoforo (Score 2) 419

by HisOmniscience (#38512562) Attached to: PR Firm Unwisely Tangles With Penny Arcade
I was of the same mind as many others that the company that makes the controllers should not be (severely) punished for using a bad PR. However, Kotkin and Christoforo are close friends; Kotkin knows what kind of person Paul is, and still employed him despite there being previous complaints.

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/4224/article/ocean-marketing-s-paul-christoforo-has-a-history-of-domestic-violence/

Perhaps this is explainable, in the fact that David Kotkin and Paul Christoforo are 'bros' in real life. A bit of internet sleuthing reveals that the two run a business together in Miami called Afternoon Artists Inc. The relationship is hardly as innocuous as they would have any of us believe.
It would seem that Christoforo's own apology (via the previous Kotaku link), and Kotkin's decision to drop him come after the fact that he had been called out for his callousness, rather than from any actual sense of remorse.

Customer who dealt with Paul during the first half of the year:
http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service

Comment Re:Here's the response from an email to them (Score 1) 419

by HisOmniscience (#38512438) Attached to: PR Firm Unwisely Tangles With Penny Arcade
It's real, however, it's not the full story. Kotkin is a close friend of Christoforo, and is only throwing him under the bus as a last resort.

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/4224/article/ocean-marketing-s-paul-christoforo-has-a-history-of-domestic-violence/

Perhaps this is explainable, in the fact that David Kotkin and Paul Christoforo are 'bros' in real life. A bit of internet sleuthing reveals that the two run a business together in Miami called Afternoon Artists Inc. The relationship is hardly as innocuous as they would have any of us believe.
The Almighty Buck

Steam Translation Community Slaving Away 214

Posted by timothy from the in-their-air-conditioned-galleys dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Steam has decided to build a community effort to get its Steam platform and game files translated by the community, but here is the catch: Translators do not get paid. Millions could be saved by Steam by making the community work for free. The article describes basic estimates on how much is saved by Steam in translation costs."
Image

Environmental Enforcement Agents Targeting Guitars 379

Posted by samzenpus from the first-they-came-for-the-mandolins-and-I-said-nothing dept.
tetrahedrassface writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal agents again raided guitar maker Gibson this past week, seizing several pallets of wood and computer documents. At the heart of the issue is the wood that is being used in guitars and whether or not it comes from sustainable sources. The company insists it is being harassed and made to 'cry uncle' to the government's enforcement laws. The article notes that exotic fret and tone woods are protected in order to prevent the equivalent of 'blood diamond like trade,' but the ramifications now extend to guitar owners. If you play a vintage guitar, or a hand-built guitar made of old stock woods that were legally obtained years ago, you better not fly with it. John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says, 'there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified.' Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, 'I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar.'"
Biotech

The Average Human Has 60 New Genetic Mutations 246

Posted by samzenpus from the magnetic-colon dept.
mcgrew pointed out a story about a new study that found the average person is born with 60 genetic mutations, very few of which involve weather manipulation or an amazing healing factor. This number was less than expected, leading the researchers to believe human evolution happens more slowly than previously thought. From the article: "Sixty mutations may sound like a lot, but according to the international team of geneticists behind the new research, it is actually fewer than expected. 'We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child,' Philip Awadalla, a geneticist at the University of Montreal who co-led the project, said in a press release. 'Our genetic study, the first of its kind, shows that actually much fewer mistakes, or mutations, are made.'
Books

Spammers Discover Kindle Self-Publishing 122

Posted by Soulskill from the if-you-build-it-they-will-come dept.
innocent_white_lamb writes "Make it easy to self-publish books and the spammers will be right along too. Amazon's Kindle marketplace has been deluged by low-quality 'books' selling for 99 cents each. '[Thousands of ebooks published each month] are built using something known as Private Label Rights, or PLR content, which is information that can be bought very cheaply online then reformatted into a digital book. These ebooks are listed for sale – often at 99 cents – alongside more traditional books on Amazon’s website, forcing readers to plow through many more titles to find what they want. Aspiring spammers can even buy a DVD box set called Autopilot Kindle Cash that claims to teach people how to publish 10 to 20 new Kindle books a day without writing a word.'"
Music

Ubisoft Announces Music Game For Real Guitars 172

Posted by Soulskill from the just-in-case-you-thought-the-plastic-ones-didn't-cost-enough dept.
Despite recent troubles in the music game market, Ubisoft thinks the genre still has room for innovation. They have announced Rocksmith, a rhythm game designed for use with real electric guitars. The guitars will connect to a console or PC through the standard output jack. "... the 'note highway' is actually a virtual guitar fretboard, complete with numbers which correspond to the different frets, and the 'target zone' consists of six horizontal strings. Wherever each note appears on the virtual fret board, that’s where your finger(s) go on the physical fretboard. Once the note reaches the target area you strum the string it comes into contact with. Simple. The camera zooms dynamically to highlight where on the fret board you should be looking at, in much the same way that a musician’s eyes would scan up and down the neck of the instrument during a performance."
Sci-Fi

Does Syfy Really Love Sci-Fi? 742

Posted by Soulskill from the but-they-had-this-awesome-movie-about-a-ferret-monster dept.
brumgrunt writes "Has Syfy fallen out with science fiction altogether? A look at its latest scheduling shows that it's further away from its roots than ever. 'There's still a lot of the older sci-fi content on the airwaves, but it's slowly being phased out, and forget about original programming. After all, this is the programming crew who ruined Caprica by stuffing it into the Friday night death slot and splitting the season into two parts. These are the geniuses who killed off Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. These are the people who wrecked Farscape, one of the most inventive and fun sci-fi shows to ever be on television. They also ended Mystery Science Theater 3000, only the greatest show ever invented by robots in space.' Is this now as good as it gets?"
Government

CIA Shows Off (Formerly) Super-Secret Spy Goodies 100

Posted by timothy from the gov't-spy-porn->-gov't-cheese dept.
Velcroman1 writes "Last week, [the CIA] launched a revamped website with links to YouTube and Flickr containing Agency historical videos and picture galleries. 'The idea behind these improvements is to make more information about the agency available to more people, more easily,' Director Panetta said in a statement. 'The CIA wants the American people and the world to understand its mission and its vital role in keeping our country safe.' In terms of pure coolness the Flickr stream takes the cake — including never-before-seen gallery of special agent supergadgets."
Google

Microsoft Vehemently Denies Google's "Bing Sting" 596

Posted by CmdrTaco from the big-surprise-here dept.
eldavojohn writes "In a blog post titled 'Setting the Record Straight,' Microsoft's senior vice president of online services, Yusuf Mehdi, addressed Google's 'Bing Sting' operation saying, 'We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting.' Mehdi went on to claim that Google engaged in 'click fraud' in order to rig up their alleged 'experiment.' Mehdi added, 'That's right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn't already know.' The struggle for Bing to usurp Google as number one in search continues."
Movies

Inception, The Social Network, TS3 Get Oscar Noms 201

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stop-nominate-and-listen dept.
Among the Best Picture nominations this year are Inception, The Social Network and Toy Story 3. In addition to TS3, the Animation category has How to Train Your Dragon and The Illusionist. Also getting a nod in documentary was Exit Through the Gift Shop, which is worth your time if you are into that sort of thing. You'll have to wait a month to find out who the winners are... and to find out what the stars will wear on the red carpet. Or to play the Oscar speech drinking game.
The Media

Google's New Meta-Tags For News Story Authors 71

Posted by timothy from the tree-of-attribution dept.
EreIamJH writes "Google News is experimenting with meta-tags in an effort to ensure that the correct news source is credited with an article. The original-source meta-tag will identify the newspaper that breaks a story, while syndication-source is for everyone who repeats the story. Both meta-tags can appear multiple times — for instance an article that sources information from other articles would include an original-source tag for each article used in preparing the new article. While the intention is worthy, I look forward to lots of snarky blogger fights as journalists vent their hurt feelings for having been omitted as an original source."

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