Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Posted on 21st Mar 2011 at 11:43 by Podcast with 9 comments

This weeks gaming podcast sees Harry, Paul, Joe and Clive sit down to discuss some of the games we've been playing and reviewing lately. First up for the bit-tech treatment is the Crysis 2 demo which Harry has been playing. It's only a small part of the multiplayer portion of the game but it's an interesting window into what direction the rest of the game will take.

We also discuss Clive's review of Shogun 2: Total War and what he liked and disliked about the game. After that Joe takes us through his experiences with Dragon Age 2 and why he doesn't like the game, but still gave it a 7/10.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Mionix Propus 380 mousepad. This beast of a mouse mat should provide the perfect tracking surface, whichever mouse you choose to use.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. This edition of the podcast was also sponsored by Darkspore. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Lobbyists? Long Effort to Revive Nuclear Industry Faces New Test

Pete V. Domenici, then a Republican senator from New Mexico, was looking for an issue to claim as his own. One staff member, a former scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear lab, tossed out an idea that seemed dead on arrival: a renewed commitment to nuclear energy.

?Are you serious?? Mr. Domenici remembers asking the aide incredulously. After Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, nuclear energy had fallen into disfavor, development had stalled, and many politicians ran from the issue like it was a toxic cloud.

But with industry backing, Mr. Domenici overcame his skepticism and became one of the driving forces in a decade-long renaissance of nuclear energy ? a resurgence that began in earnest under President George W. Bush and has led President Obama to seek a $36 billion expansion in loan guarantees to finance reactors at a time when other programs are being slashed.

Now, however, the future of nuclear energy in the United States is in doubt, with advocates on all sides bracing for a fierce debate over whether the disaster in Japan should slow or even derail the planned expansion of America?s 104 nuclear reactors.

Mr. Obama has shown no sign of backing away ? a testament to the success of an expensive multiyear campaign by the nuclear energy industry, advocates in Congress and the executive branch.

Nuclear executives, girding for a fight, have already held 20 briefings for Washington lawmakers and others about the events in Japan and the potential lessons learned at home. They have been putting out guidance on increased safeguards for reactors, and giving reporters tours of nuclear plants.

The message: Despite the events in Japan, nuclear is a safe, affordable and ?clean? energy source that does not spew harmful carbons into the environment or rely on foreign producers.

?We surely should avoid a rush to judgment,? Jeff Merrifield, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in one of a series of videos that the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading trade group, has put out on its Web site since this month?s tsunami crippled Japan?s reactors. The United States, he said, should ?continue to move forward with building those plants because it?s the right thing for our nation.?

But with polls in the last two weeks showing dimmed support for nuclear power, opponents are hoping to use the events in Japan to slow the industry?s political momentum and challenge what the industry maintains is a long record of safety.

?The risk is just so great if there?s a screw-up,? said David Hamilton, director of energy programs for the Sierra Club, which opposes the expansion of nuclear energy. ?The nuclear renaissance was already hanging by a thread, and the Japanese disaster may have cut the thread.?

But even the critics acknowledge that the industry?s backers have managed to jump-start nuclear energy in a way that few thought possible a decade ago.

One turning point, people on both sides of the issue agree, was that proponents took advantage of the public concern over climate change and carbon-producing fuels beginning in the early 2000s and were able to recast themselves ? first to fence-sitting lawmakers, then to the public as a whole ? as a ?clean? alternative that would not harm the environment.

?It was a brilliant campaign,? said Tyson Slocum, an energy expert at Public Citizen, which opposes nuclear energy because of concerns about its safety, security and cost.

?While everyone was focused on shutting down coal plants, they had a couple of years to themselves to just talk to the American public in very sophisticated ad campaigns and to reintroduce a generation of Americans to nuclear power,? he said. ?That was very powerful.?

Nuclear industry firms and their employees also contributed more than $4.6 million in the last decade to members of Congress ? both Republicans and Democrats, including Mr. Obama, then a senator, and his presidential campaign ? as the industry?s political fortunes were rising, according to an analysis by MAPLight.org, a Washington research group that tracks money and politics.

And the industry has spent tens of millions more lately on lobbying. Last year, electric utilities, trade groups and other backers spent $54 million hiring lobbyists, including former members of Congress, to make their case, according to a separate analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, which also tracks money and politics.

As a senator, Mr. Domenici was a big beneficiary of the industry?s largess, collecting more than $1.25 million over his 20-year career from political donors affiliated with the energy sector.

Months after he committed himself to promoting nuclear energy, he gave a talk on the topic in 1997 at Harvard University called ?A New Nuclear Paradigm.? Nuclear energy proponents called it a seminal moment in the shift of public opinion.

?I wanted to put nuclear power in its proper perspective,? said Mr. Domenici, who left the Senate in 2009 and serves as a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

?You have this resource just sitting there saying, ?Are you going to use me or not?? ? Mr. Domenici said in an interview last week. ?People were stirring up fears of another Three Mile Island, but I believe the reality of nuclear power has now become much better known.?

Mr. Domenici?s position as a senior member of both the Senate Energy and Appropriations Committees gave him a particularly influential role in helping the industry. He was at Mr. Bush?s side in 2005, when the president signed a major bill that encouraged the building of new nuclear plants. Work has now begun on four new plants.

Mr. Domenici?s former aides have gone on to play critical roles in the debate as well.

Pete Lyons, a nuclear scientist and the former Domenici aide who first suggested the nuclear energy idea to the senator at his 1997 brainstorming session, went on to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has been nominated by Mr. Obama to run the Energy Department?s civilian nuclear program. Alex Flint, another Domenici aide at the meeting, now is the chief federal lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Institute. And a third aide at the meeting, Steve Bell, assists Mr. Domenici?s work on a presidential panel on nuclear waste.

Mr. Flint said the senator?s staff did not expect to succeed when Mr. Domenici began proposing modest appropriations for nuclear research and programming in the late 1990s.

?We were going against the conventional wisdom,? Mr. Flint said. ?We expected a pushback, but we didn?t get it. And it just grew from there.?

Within the Energy Department, meanwhile, a 2003 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the future of nuclear energy helped forge a consensus within the government, even among skeptical policy makers, officials said. The study concluded that while nuclear power was facing ?stagnation and decline,? it should remain an important way to provide carbon-free energy at relatively low cost.

?That really moved my thinking, and that kind of analysis was very influential,? said Daniel B. Poneman, deputy secretary at the Energy Department.

Today, there is no doubt about where the Energy Department stands.

Its Web site extols the value of nuclear energy as providing ?low-cost, carbon-free electricity to help drive the American economy and preserve the environment,? and it even includes a special page for children called ?the Power Pack,? featuring a sci-fi journey through nuclear energy.

For critics urging a go-slow approach to building reactors, the enthusiasm is all a bit much.

?The industry has really embedded itself in the political establishment,? said Mr. Slocum at Public Citizen. ?They?ve had reliable friends from George Bush to Barack Obama, and the government has really just become cheerleaders for the industry.?

Whether events in Japan change the political calculus in Washington ?is what everyone is waiting to see,? he said. ?We don?t want to be seen as exploiting a tragedy, but it?s prudent to talk about the implications here. The best and the brightest can?t see around every corner.?

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RIM confirms BlackBerry PlayBook will support Android apps

The Rise of the Hobby Developer

The Rise of the Hobby Developer

Posted on 18th Mar 2011 at 16:33 by David Hing with 8 comments

Developers around the world have submitted over 61,000 games made in Game Maker to the YoYo Games site since 2007. The rate at which they are being submitted is that, when I started writing and researching this article, it was closer to 60,900. A new game is submitted every 20 minutes.

As you can probably guess based on the rate of submissions, a lot of these games are more works in progress than stable, finished releases. There?s no real quality control and the content ranges from the likes of Crimelife 2 to Box Dodger.

There are a lot of indie developers who use Game Maker as a way of producing very high quality titles, but what I find more interesting is the number of what I would describe as ?hobby developers? there are out there.

By a hobby developer, I mean someone who is in the same boat as me: they love games, they love the idea of making games, they have ideas for making games, but their programming ability is remedial at best.

Hobby developers today have a plethora of choices available. There?s rapid prototyping software like Game Maker or RPG Maker. There are platforms like Unity or Flash which have a wide range of uses, or there are languages or design suites that cater to the creation of games. Gone are the days of having to learn OpenGL APIs and patch in the missing links between "learning C++ in 21 days" and "Using C++ to make something that looks like a game".

There has been a lot of talk lately about the rise of the indie studio. If nothing else the mind blowing success of Minecraft has pricked a few ears across the industry and arguably for the first time since the days of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, we are starting to see teams of one or two people produce ground breaking commercially successful games. What there is less talk about is how large numbers of people are making games for no other reason than the fun of it.

If you have a pet project that you've been keeping to yourself, click here to throw a link up on the forums.

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Making Targeted Cancer Drugs Work Better

Targeted cancer drugs?those that selectively kill cancer cells?have been a revelation in cancer treatment, giving years of healthy life to some lucky patients. But unfortunately, only a subset of patients responds to the various therapies, and even those who do respond eventually grow resistant.

Now scientists are starting to figure out how to make those drugs work more effectively in a larger number of patients, in part by better understanding the complex inner workings of the cancer cell. In two studies focusing on a promising class of drugs for lung cancer called EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors, researchers have pinpointed new drug targets that could enhance the drugs' activity. They hope the findings will enable a new approach to personalized cancer care, suggesting specific combinations of drugs that will be most effective for an individual's cancer.

"We have hundreds of drugs now in development and cannot test them in all possible combinations," says Philip Sharp, Institute Professor at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. "To personalize cancer care, we must interpret changes in cellular networks or mutations to predict the correct drug combination to use. [These] results indicate that this is beginning to become possible."

EGFR inhibitors work in about 10 to 40 percent of lung cancer patients, depending on ethnicity, gender, and smoking history. People whose cancers have mutations in the gene for EGFR are also more likely to respond to the drugs, but these mutations aren't as predictive as scientists had hoped. Not everyone who does well on the drug has the mutation?depending on the study, about 10 to 60 percent of responders don't have it?and not everyone with the mutation responds.

Starting with a line of cancer cells known to be resistant to EGFR inhibitors, Charles Sawyers and collaborators at Sloan Kettering silenced a selection of cancer-related genes one by one. They found they could make the cells sensitive to the drug by inhibiting different genes in a molecular pathway called NF-Kappa Beta, which regulates cell division and death.

The findings held true in lung cancer patients; among patients with the EGFR mutation, those with higher activity in this pathway fared much worse when given the drug than those with lower activity. The results suggest that EGFR inhibitors would be more effective in some patients if given along with drugs that inhibit the NF-Kappa Beta pathway.

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A wireless conference?but where are the apps?

I was pretty excited to head to CTIA. Not only because I knew that I?d see some amazing wireless technology (and I did) but also because I knew that there was a large section of the floor dedicated solely to applications. This, in case you?ve not read my gushing love of apps on TNW Apps before, was enough to get my pulse racing.

So there I stood at the bottom of the escalator, getting ready for my first steps onto the show floor. After visiting the booths of some major mobile manufacturers, it was high time to get into some apps love.

I had no doubt that we probably weren?t going to see many consumer-focused applications, but I was OK with that. B2B was fine, as long as it was unique and took advantage of emerging wireless technology. I expected to see some LTE/WiMax stuff, perhaps some educational tech and maybe even some medically-oriented apps.

What I saw was, in a word, disappointing.

That?s not to say that the quality of the apps that were there was bad. That?t not at all the case. The apps that were there were absolutely top-notch stuff that, while amazing to me, probably would have bored you to death. We?ve found that our TNW readers aren?t big into B2B, and that was in fact a lot of what was around.

The disappointing thing for me was that there were only 4 or 5 offerings that really pushed boundaries. Out of the 50 or so application developers that I talked to, most of them seemed to be trying to do what was already done, only different.

While there is a place for that inside of our world in technology, that seems to be an all-too-often case. Tech is a world where ?me too? gets nearly as much attention as groundbreaking. It?s a sad state of affairs, but that?s simply the way things are. I wanted to be blown away by something that was new and otherwise undone. The closest thing that I saw to that had absolutely nothing to do with applications, and it left me wanting for more from that section of the event.

It is 2011, we have nearly broadband-quality mobile Internet in a very wide portion of the United States. While I obviously can?t speak about the state of the rest of the world, it seems that developers aren?t paying nearly enough attention to what could be done, and they?re focusing rather on the easy way to gather attention.

Maybe it?s a character flaw of mine, but I have never wanted to be the one to ride on the coat tails of another. Apps developers that we write about here on TNW do interesting, unique and usable things, they are not the ones who just hope to ride an existing wave, and that?s a lot of what I saw at CTIA?s apps section.

My hope isn?t gone, though. I got some great interviews done and there are companies that are doing things that I can?t really tell you about yet, but will be able to soon. For now, CTIA is over and I?m taking a nap. We?ll catch up to the rest of the apps soon.

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Red Hat nears $1 billion in revenue

Silicon Valley Uncovered: Biggest challenge facing startup Qwiki? Hiring talent

Qwiki, the information experience startup we covered last year is growing up quickly; They raised a series A funding round in the form of $8million and moved out of its small Palo Alto office behind a rug shop into an impressive 6,351 square foot office in the middle of SoMa?s startup district, but co-founder Doug Imbruce tells me the thing stopping the company from releasing ?lots of great products people enjoy is recruiting great engineers?.

It?s a common theme I?m hearing here in the valley where startups find it hard to compete with tech giants like Google and Facebook in terms of offering engineers competitive  salary rates and company benefits. Since their launch Qwiki has served over 5 million Qwikis on 3 million topics and desperately needs to hire more designers and developers in order to ingest and curate the content and ultimately scale.

Part of the problem is also to do with visa issues talent face when trying to move to the US. Many of the developers at Qwiki are currently European and when I asked Doug which visa?s they are on? ?We?re working on it,? he replied. There is hope in the form of new legislation making it easier for talent to move to the US, but it needs to pass through both houses which could take a while and talent is needed now.

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Silicon Valley Uncovered: Biggest challenge facing startup Qwiki? Hiring talent

Qwiki, the information experience startup we covered last year is growing up quickly; They raised a series A funding round in the form of $8million and moved out of its small Palo Alto office behind a rug shop into an impressive 6,351 square foot office in the middle of SoMa?s startup district, but co-founder Doug Imbruce tells me the thing stopping the company from releasing ?lots of great products people enjoy is recruiting great engineers?.

It?s a common theme I?m hearing here in the valley where startups find it hard to compete with tech giants like Google and Facebook in terms of offering engineers competitive  salary rates and company benefits. Since their launch Qwiki has served over 5 million Qwikis on 3 million topics and desperately needs to hire more designers and developers in order to ingest and curate the content and ultimately scale.

Part of the problem is also to do with visa issues talent face when trying to move to the US. Many of the developers at Qwiki are currently European and when I asked Doug which visa?s they are on? ?We?re working on it,? he replied. There is hope in the form of new legislation making it easier for talent to move to the US, but it needs to pass through both houses which could take a while and talent is needed now.

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Allies Pressure Qaddafi Forces Around Rebel Cities

A pounding from allied warplanes in the rebel-held city of Misurata forced Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi?s troops to pull back for much of the day, residents said, but by nightfall his forces had renewed their attacks. Government tanks terrorized the city, in one instance firing a shell that landed 20 yards from a hospital door. In Tripoli, small bursts of antiaircraft fire sounded as warplanes streaked across the sky.

American military officials said that the first stage of the military campaign, when more than 160 Tomahawk missiles fired from ships at sea largely destroyed Colonel Qaddafi?s air defenses and air force, had made the skies safe for coalition warplanes. The allies were conducting stepped up attacks on ground troops, military officials said, without fear of being shot down.

?We are interdicting and putting the pressure on Qaddafi?s forces that are attacking population centers,? said Rear Adm. Gerard P. Hueber, the chief of staff for the American-led operational command, speaking to reporters by audio link from a ship in the Mediterranean.

Admiral Hueber said the United States and its allies were striking at Colonel Qaddafi?s ground forces in both Misurata in the west and Ajdabiya in the east. Air attacks in such urban areas, which have the potential for many civilian casualties, meant the military was operating in ?an extremely complex and difficult environment,? he said.

The goal was to ?interdict those forces before they enter the city, cut off their lines of communication and cut off their command and control,? the admiral said.

As long as Colonel Qaddafi?s forces were fighting in and around cities where the allies had ordered them to back off, he said, coalition attacks would continue. He said the allies are in communication with the Libyan units about what they need to do, where to go and how to arrange their forces to avoid attack, but there was ?no indication? that the government?s ground forces were following the instructions.

Admiral Hueber also said that the coalition was communicating with rebel forces. But later, when he was pressed on whether the United States was telling rebels not to go down certain roads because there would be airstrikes there, he said he had misspoken. American military officials have said there are no ?official communications? with the rebels, which remains a delicate issue. Contact with the rebels would reflect a direct American military intervention in the civil war of another country.

President Obama, who returned to Washington on Wednesday from a trip to Latin America, has said that the goal of the military assault is not to remove Colonel Qaddafi from power and that the United States will step back within days from playing the lead role in the attacks.

But by striking directly at Libyan fighting forces in the midst of battle against the rebels and seeking to protect civilians, the United States and its allies highlighted the thin line between all-out war and the more limited mission, set out by a United Nations resolution, of enforcing a no-fly zone and forcing the pro-Qaddafi fighters to withdraw.

As the war intensified, Mr. Obama faced new pressures in Congress. The House speaker, John A. Boehner, sent the White House a letter on Wednesday, demanding answers about the cost of the war, an exit strategy and when the United States would hand off the lead role to the allies. He also asked a question central in Washington: ?Is it an acceptable outcome for Qaddafi to remain in power after the military effort concludes in Libya??

Obama administration officials continued to say that although they were not specifically seeking to attack Colonel Qaddafi, the Libyan leader might be ousted from power by his own family or inner circle. ?I think there are any number of possible outcomes here, and no one is in a position to predict them,? Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said during an official visit to Cairo.

Both Mr. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cited defections within Colonel Qaddafi?s ruling circle and alluded to divisions within his family, although they provided no details.

?We?ve heard about other people close to him reaching out to people that they know around the world ? Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, beyond, saying: ?What do we do?  How do we get out of this?  What happens next?? ? Mrs. Clinton told Diane Sawyer of ABC News on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton cited reports of others now considering defecting, though she did not elaborate.

?We?ve been hearing a lot of things from many different sources,? she said at the State Department after a meeting with the foreign minister of Morocco, Taieb Fassi Fihri. ?But what is very clear is that Qaddafi has lost his legitimacy to govern and the confidence of his people.?

Mrs. Clinton defended the operation so far. ?I know that the nightly news cannot cover a humanitarian crisis that thankfully did not happen,? she said, ?but it is important to remember that many, many Libyans are safer today because the international community took action.?

NATO inched closer on Wednesday to agreeing to who would be in charge of military operations once the United States stepped back, although strains remained.

The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said that representatives from the United States, Europe, Africa and the Arab nations would meet next week in London to discuss who would take the lead. But Germany, which has opposed military intervention in the Libya crisis, said it was withdrawing four of its ships in the Mediterranean from NATO command. To offset the impact of its action on other NATO allies, Germany said it would send 300 more troops to Afghanistan to help operate surveillance aircraft, German officials said.

In Tripoli, there was not nearly as much antiaircraft fire on Wednesday as on previous nights, suggesting that allied airstrikes may have taken out some of the larger guns or heavily armed positions. 

In Ajdabiya, which has changed hands from the rebels to Qaddafi loyalists several times, residents said relentless shelling by loyalist troops had forced them to flee. One report called the city a ?ghost town.?

Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Tripoli, Libya. Reporting was contributed by Thom Shanker from Cairo; Steven Erlanger and Alan Cowell from Paris; and Mark Landler and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.

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