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Yup, the captain apparently failed multiple exams... In addition while having something like 3000+ flight hours, he only had 110 in the plane he was in and seems to have had very little experience in icing conditions(he was based out of Florida). The co-pilot apparently NEVER had experience in icy conditions according to the CVR:

Shaw responded, "I've never seen icing conditions. I've never de-iced. I've never seen any. I've never experienced any of that. I don't want to have to experience that and make those kinds of calls . . . You know I'd have freaked out. I'd have like seen this much ice and thought, oh my gosh, we were going to crash."

as I never heart of VATS (and I'm sure I'm not alone):

VATS is "Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System", where you can pause the game and target specific enemy body parts.

PS the first Googlöe result page is full of articles about lobectomy, in this case the abbreviation means "video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery"

> Mirror's Edge was crap,

I'm a game programmer, designer, and my friends know that I tend to be very vocal about ranting (-negative) and rave (+postive) about games _with_ very specific design (& implementation) reasons WHY said games are good/bad.

You haven't listed _any_ reasons.

I am going to include what I emailed my friends back in Dec '09 when I finished it.

Raves

+ Story was engaging enough for me to actually finish the game - it was half-decent. I was entertained. Maybe I had no expectations, or was able to put all the hype aside. Regardless, they could of easily messed this one up, and was thankful EA didn't fuck it up or make it worse then it could of been.

+ The martial arts mini-boss battle with the white assassin was REAL interesting to figure out how to beat. The hand-to-hand combat was neat when you were able to execute the timing.

+ Artistic / Beautiful (over-saturated) world, even if bordering on "bland." The main menu definitely has a very cool look to it when you stop and considering it is all being rendered in real-time was used to be pre-rendered cut-scenes just 5 years ago. The "visuals" of the game reminds me of originality of the pre-rendered cut-scenes of Privater.

+ Music was awesome and fit the mood perfectly. Rank 11 / 10 .

+ The game is literally a puzzle game -- where do I go next. I enjoyed the last few levels of the game the best. Initial frustration turned to joy of figuring them out.
http://www.mahalo.com/mirrors-edge-kate (Start watching around 5 min mark)
http://faqs.ign.com/articles/953/953471p8.html (or start here)

+ You can skip the cutscenes! Thank-God.

Rants:

- Unfortunately, most of the time you have no clue how to actually get where you are supposed to go. Yes, I used the built-in hint to view. I still spent far too much time trying to figure out how the heck to get up there. Yes, this is a VERY fine line between spoon feeding the player and forcing him to solve difficult puzzles. While the overall level design was good, the individual specific environment hints of where to go next was terrible. The levels were for the most part, not intuitive. Which leads me to my next point...

- I grok the point of the game. I really do. You pull off all these amazing moves in one zen flow of execution and it feels fucking fantastic!

The hard Reality of the situation: You spend 1 minute figuring out where to go next. You die. You figure out that jump / climb, then you get stuck again trying to figure out the next 'segment'. Repeat ad nasuem. This constant interruption on trying to figure out how to make your way from 'Start' to some vague 'Finish' location, TOTALLY breaks the flow of the game. Each time you die, you figure out a little more of the "path" you are supposed to take. Finally, after 20 deaths, you can "chain" all the movement together, it feels awesome to do all these "stunts", and you think "this game has potential !" Then you die, and you realize you are a new checkpoint and you get to do it all over again until the chapter is done. LOL.

- Bad save-points. There was even one point where the save-point was BEFORE a cutscene, so when you died you had to skip it all the time. WTF? Place the dam save-point AFTER. If cut-scenes weren't skippable, I think this would of been a pretty major deal breaker.

- Was too easy to accidently skip the cutscenes. The first time I played I actually ended up skipping the cut scene when ending the first level because I didn't realize my direct action was over !

- The world is BARREN. Aside from a few pedestrations you see down below on the street, you never see anybody "normal" in any of the offices or indoors aside from Police or a few people dependent on the plot. Even the inside offices were "too clean." Not even a secretary was around ??? Grand Theft Auto was (partially) suc

Also, you should roll, rather than stretch it it over the tip to avoid weakening the latex, even though it hurts like hell.

It's not surposed to hurt. If you're trying to wear the teat of the condom, you're doing it wrong. Advice here.

The first time I heard about Bebo was what David Motari, brave US Marine psychopath, infamously killed a puppy by throwing it off a cliff. Feral children indeed.

Here's to keeping Motari's name alive in the hope that he never becomes employed and lives a grand life as a deservedly homeless vet flying a sign at random freeway onramps.

http://www.mahalo.com/david-motari

They are not alone...

The BBC has this problem.

As does CNN.

Even Engadget has their finger on this pulse...

And the odd TV station.

And just plain odd sites.

The U.S. Army got in on this one.

And Rutgers University chimed in. Well, someone at Rutgers.

If your point was that Fox News got snookered, well, they are in good company. If your point was that this is jsut another example of Fox News incompetence, well, you can use the same brush to tar CNN and the BBC. Though what the threee have in common escapes me. Oh, wait, I know.

They all purport to deliver the truth.

Right.

Nice try though. Keep swinging. In baseball, succeeding once in 4 at bats will get you a decent job. In politics and Slashdot, you need much less. Way much less.

So do Saturday morning cartoons; hence the dual audience.

Of course, just look at the number of time Bugs Bunny appears in drag.

Freaking hilarious.

Right to peaceful protest: There are hundreds of peaceful protests a year throughout China, ranging in size from single individuals up to groups of hundreds. While I'm no legal expert, it seems to me the relevant differences between Chinese and, say, US laws governing peaceful assembly are that the Chinese government can be a bit more nebulous in denying permits, and that protests espousing illegal activities or undermining social harmony are not tolerated. Now, one might (and probably could) argue that the government has abused loopholes in the laws. But the right to peaceful protest is enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

Right to choice of religion: Again, the right is constitutionally guaranteed. I am a practicing Catholic who attends Mass weekly here in Shanghai. If I wanted to, I could become Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or one of hundreds of persuasions of Protestant, all without government interference. I'm even free to proselytize.

Yes China has laws governing the limits and nature of permissible religious activities. So does the US. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, have found themselves in US court over refusal on religious grounds of medical treatment for their children. American religious and charitable groups are required to register with the government (currently only for tax purposes) and their right to freedom speech is curtailed: ask an American pastor or priest to endorse a particular political candidate (or even party) next election cycle, and watch how fast the government comes down on his church. How is this substantively different from China? While you or I may not like where China draws its lines, the fact remains every country draws lines.

Right to have children: Without intending to start a protracted debate over China's one-child policy, it is not illegal in China for couples to have multiple children; the national average is currently two, statistically identical to the US. It is true that the government attempts to dissuade multiple children through a(n often heavy-handed) system of positive and negative incentives, such as fines, denials of government assistance, and lump-sum retirement payments to compliant couples. It is also true that the policy has always been ripe for abuse by corrupt (an endemic problem in China) or overzealous local officials, most notoriously through incidences of forced abortion and sterilization (both of which are illegal; http://www.mahalo.com/china-forced-abortions) in rural areas. But that hardly equates to accusations of systematic government policy, and your assertion that Chinese couples have no right to have children is plain silly. In any case, the government is slated to scrap the one-child policy completely in the near future http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article3451974.ece.

Right to choice of political persuasion: depends on what you mean. Yeah, there's only one legal political party in China (and yet, CP membership, which is in decline, barely keeps pace with the US Democratic party). And yes publicly advocating contrary to the "party line" can get you in a boatload of trouble. However, I am free to personally believe any politics I wish, as long as I don't make myself a public nuisance in the process. You may not like that, and you may consider that a violation of free speech (personally, I don't and I do). I just wanted to clarify that the Chinese government doesn't give a rat's petutti what my political opinions are as long as I don't go around disturbing social harmony.

OK, flame away. But flame me for what I'm saying, not what I'm not: don't accuse me of being some pro-China apologist who thinks China has no human rights problems (even Beijing admits it does; see its 2009-2010 "National Human Rights Action Plan"). What I am arguing is th

I'm not sure what they want, but they are getting the tech, the brand, the manufacturing plant and let's not forget the distribution network.

The buyer, Sichuan Tengzhong, looks like an interesting company. They manufacture heavy equipment, special-use vehicles, highway & bridge structural components, construction machinery and energy facilities. That's a varied mix, but I don't see passenger autos in there. They've been in business since 2005. They are a private company; I'm not sure where they get their funding or their origins.

http://www.mahalo.com/Sichuan_Tengzhong#guide_note-Official-1

I struggled too at first ;-)

Well, I suppose that could be his voting record. But it could be someone else's , too.

How is this different from Mahalo? The media wiki powered search engine that has been up for almost a year?

Google is not the only company offering cash for search results. In fact, they're not even the first.

Mahalo[1] has been doing this for months now, and the payout starts at $10 (not $2) and goes up from there. You can sign up to be a part-time guide at the Mahalo Greenhouse[2].

[1] http://www.mahalo.com/
[2] http://greenhouse.mahalo.com/

Google is not the only company offering cash for search results. In fact, they're not even the first.

Mahalo[1] has been doing this for months now, and the payout starts at $10 (not $2) and goes up from there. You can sign up to be a part-time guide at the Mahalo Greenhouse[2].

[1] http://www.mahalo.com/
[2] http://greenhouse.mahalo.com/