A post up at Gamasutra complains about the lack of effort put into the PC ports of some console games. The author picks on the unimpressively-reviewed Ninja Blade in particular: "Just as a quick guide to what we're dealing with here: when you create a new save file at the start of Ninja Blade on the PC, it warns you not to 'turn off your console.' Yes, Ninja Blade is one of those conversions: not so much converted as made to perfunctorily run on a different machine. In-game, you're asked to press A, B, X and Y in various sequences as part of Ninja Blade's extraordinary abundance of quick-time events. Whether you have an Xbox 360 pad plugged in or not, the game captions these button icons with text describing the PC equivalent controls. Only it doesn't always do that. Sometimes, you're left staring at a giant, pulsating, green letter A, and no idea what to do with it." What awful ports have you had the misfortune to experience?

An anonymous reader alerts us to an Orlando Sentinel report based on a leaked NASA email, indicating that NASA is looking at options to extend the Shuttle program. The fighting between Russia and Georgia has put a strain on plans to rely on Russian boosters until the Shuttle's replacement flies in 2015. Yet extending the Shuttle's life is no sure thing. According to a former NASA program manager, "We started shutting down the shuttle four years ago. That horse has left the barn." And NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has told Congress that if the Shuttle fleet were to fly two missions a year until 2015, "the risk would be about one in 12 that we would lose another crew. That's a high risk... [one] I would not choose to accept on behalf of our astronauts." And then there's the matter of finding the $4 billion a year it would take to keep the fleet operational. The Sentinel mentions that John McCain has called for additional Shuttle flights, but doesn't mention that Barack Obama has made the same point, as the BBC reports.