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They sit there and carefully and systematically work through each game, taking notes on the sound, music, graphics, etc. They evaluate the game the same way Roger Ebert carefully picks through a movie and sees it's good bits and bad bits.

That's only one thing that a game reviewer is supposed to do. They are also supposed to review the game as a whole. More often than most would care to admit, there is nowhere near that level of attention to detail when conducting a review. How many times have we seen so-called reviewers exposed for being nothing more than fanboys on the take from publishers (bribes, junkets and payola)? Or even worse, how often do they write reviews without ever seeing or playing the game in question (fraudulent reviews)?

As long as the publishers know that they can manipulate reviewers by the carrot --bribes, junkets and payola-- or the stick --threatening no review copies of games or no access to staff for interviews-- they know that they can get away with just about anything when publishing games. Is there any wonder why 95% of games published don't make a profit?

At Geartest.com we have faced the latter problem, where publishers will not send us the actual products, even when we occasionally request them.

They send us press releases, screenshots, more PR about promotional offers, bundle discounts and contests, but they rarely send the software.

Maybe it's because we have repeatedly told them that we won't publish non-news, and we won't publish features without direct access to the game in question and/or the staff who made the game (in the case of interviews/features).

Meanwhile, you get self-proclaimed 'journalists' like Marc Saltzman who carve out a cottage industry for themselves while doing nothing to advance serious, legitimate, journalistic or critical coverage of games.

There are an endless number of Web site and so-called 'game press' that are happy to publish PR and advertising and call them articles or features. As long as there are gamers who give these sites and magazines their traffic and pay for this type of PR content, the game companies, their marketing agencies and the publications themselves have no incentive to stop pimping, whoring and publishing lousy games.

I've seen two yuppies (the financial kind) whiz by on the sidewalk in front of my office in downtown San Francisco (so much for "a device that hasn't arrived yet"), and I wholly agree with the ban - these contraptions are a serious hazard to pedestrians. They are wide, have a high center of gravity and are very fast. They will also probably be driven by the same heedless people who burn red lights in their SUVs (I see that happen at least twice a week in SF).

This article contains many of the best reasons that this device is a complete waste of time. It seems to me that somebody remembered the Sinclair C5, realized people wanted to be on the sidewalks where they felt safer, and wasted a dynamic stabilization system.
Incidentally, does anyone know how much weight the Segway is designed to handle? Because if it does become popular, its gonna need to handle much more...

Taste of their own medicine - Poindexter gets TIA'ed.

asscroft writes "[H] has this scoop - The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the United States, has himself become a target of personal data profiling. Wired has the article. The whole idea was started by Matt Smith, a columnist for SF Weekly. And the folks over at cryptome have continued on in fine fashion. Reminds me of the spammer getting spammed. If you have any dealings with mr. Poindexter yourself, you may want to "randomly" select him for security checks, whether you work in the airport, mcdonalds, ace hardware, etc. Let's remind this bozo why we have a 4th ammendment. and remember to support the EFF's efforts against TIA."

Meta-discussion here. Note the signatures of Gorge Bush and Oliver White displayed prominently at top right.

John Poindexter is also getting a taste of his own medicine. Check out this article. They've got his address and everything.

Call John Poindexter at his home:1-301-424-6613.

Tell him how you really feel by sending him a letter:

John M. and Linda Poindexter
10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850

source 1

source 2

Subject: Total Information Awareness Demonstration for Poindexter

See the SFWeekly Article for more information...

The SF Weekly's column by Matt Smith in the Dec 3 issue points out that there may be some information that John M. and Linda Poindexter of 10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850, may be missing in their pursuit of total information awareness. He suggests that people with information to offer should phone +1 301 424 6613 to speak with that corrupt official and his wife. Neighbors Thomas E. Maxwell, 67, at 8 Barringon Fare (+1 301 251 1326), James F. Galvin, 56, at 12 (+1 301 424 0089), and Sherrill V. Stant (nee Knight) at 6, may also lack some information that would be valuable to them in making decisions -- decisions that could affect the basic civil rights of every American.

If you can find it, get "Uneasy Listening, Vol 1" although I think they only put out 1000 because he didn't license any of the songs he mixed on it. :-)

A good review of the album

This isn't their first legal battle. Two years ago (to the day) SFWeekly.com ran an article about 'em...

http://sfweekly.com/issues/1999-09-01/feature.html /page1.html

Chris Lambert - chris is at php period net
WhiteCrown Networks - Web Application Security

• http://www.bustpatents.com

shamelessly, and oftentimes profanely, attack[ing] the United States Government, specifically the Patent and Trademark Office

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

Paul

Let's see what social problems we have found in the New Gold Rush:

Domestic violence (as per article in SF Weekly) among immigrants, hard to stop because a woman's right to stay in the US often depends on staying married to a man who works in the US

Age discrimination, which happens -- the anecdotes form a pattern, even if it's hard to study statistically (for the reasons stated in the Merc article). Employers are looking for just-out-of-college youngsters who will work hard and long hours for less pay, cheap perks, and a social atmosphere. They don't want to pay older people more for fewer hours; they foolishly look for specific skills instead of aptitudes (the "required: fifteen years of Linux experience" joke). They're also hungry for more cheap H-1B workers (see previous /. discussions).

Environmental disaster from chip making (see previous /. discussion), plastic wrap using, the paving over of viable farmland, the foreseeable mess that is/will be Silicon Valley urban patterns, etc.

It really is a new gold rush, a hundred and fifty years later. Yes, it has changed the world. Yes, it will have lasting effects, good, and bad. Yes, when people are chasing after money, the unsavory parts of human nature come out in full force. Lee Iacocca said in _Talking_Straight_ (the sequel to his autobiography) that his parents told him not to go to casinos; all that loose cash lying around attracted the worst kinds of characters. He compared Wall Street in the 1980s to such a casino; one could easily move the analogy to Silicon Valley in the 1990s and, if we don't change (due to external or internal forces), the Naughties.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of immigrant men working in the Valley. You may have noticed that a lot of them are on H-1B visas. You may have noticed that a lot of them have wives also from their home countries, often India. Well, in many of those cases, since the woman is in the US as part and parcel of her husband's visa, if she leaves him, she has no legal ability to work or stay in the US by herself. So, if her husband beats her, she has almost nowhere to turn.

Domestic violence for anyone in the US is horrible and difficult to escape. But at least for citizens, there's a chance to stay in the same country as your children, support yourself, and live as a single woman, even a single mother. These women don't have that choice. To be a divorcee in India is unusual and socially not-very-acceptable in a lot of places, and a single mother is almost unthinkable in many places.

SF Weekly is running an article on this problem. It's not hardware-related, but it may make you think about the costs of our current system.

The main difference is that it's getting in the way of us making a living while in their case it's getting in the way of them doing basic research - like finding the cure for fatal diseases ....

Furthermore, this proves that Katz understands Geeks the same way that Speilberg, Geffen and Katzenberg did when they acquired both Bill Gates as well as Paul Allen as partners.

Reports of Bill Gates' behavior in the presence of Speilberg, Geffen and Katzenberg is that he shifts from a "hard drive" alpha geek into a beta geek.

Amazing, the enormous sociosexual status acquired by hiring some blonde whores and selling them back to their home towns on a silver screen.

JMC