10 Interesting Links For February 19th
February 19th, 2009
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- EA’s Answer To Wii Fit Confirmed For May (ERTS) – But competition is finally coming to the Wii Fit: Electronic Arts' (ERTS) Wii Fit clone "EA Sports Active" will hit stores May 19. EA's Wii-only "game" (yeah, we'll call it a videogame) is expected to sell for $60, versus $90 for the Wii Fit.
- Be a hero on your own time – According to newspaper accounts and Haskett's lawyer, Philip M. Wilson, Haskett was working at the McDonald's at 10201 Rodney Parham Road last August when he interceded to stop a man who was beating a woman in the restaurant. The assailant, later identified as Perry Kennon, went outside. Haskett also stepped outside and stood at the door to keep Kennon from re-entering the restaurant. Kennon retrieved a gun from his car and shot Haskett – “multiple times,” according to Wilson. Haskett, now 22, underwent three abdominal surgeries and still carries part of a bullet in his back, according to Wilson. Haskett's medical bills exceed $300,000, Wilson said.
McDonald's insurer, Ramsey, Krug, Farrell and Lensing, said in a letter to the Commission that “we have denied this claim in its entirety as it is our opinion that Mr. Haskett's injuries did not arise out of or within the course and scope of his employment.”
- WordPress › Blog » New and Improved Plugins Directory Search – One of the biggest problems and most frequent complaints we’ve had with the WordPress.org Plugins Directory is the horrible, horrible search results.
No longer. We’re now using Sphinx (a “free open-source SQL full-text search engine”) to power search on the Plugins Directory both from the website and from within your blog’s admin (Plugins → Add New).
- INXS Star Fired, Back to Living in His Car – Four years after scoring the job of frontman for Aussie rockers INXS, J.D. Fortune is broke, homeless and back to living in his car — just as he was doing before winning the gig on the reality TV series 'Rock Star: INXS.'
- Silicon Glut Clobbering Next-Gen Solar Companies – In its report Lux says that the solar market will move from $36 billion over 5.5 GW in 2008 to $29 billion over 5.3 GW in 2009. Cell and module capacity will outweigh demand twofold to 10.4 GW, leading to a big industry shakeout which will eliminate all but the biggest solar companies. On the plus side though, the over supply will lower the price of solar making it more in line with grid parity, which Lux estimates will occur around 2011. This will fuel its growth for the next 4 years, causing the industry to grow to $70 billion on 18.5 GW by 2013.
- Al Jazeera English – Americas – US fraud claim sparks bank panic – Hundreds of investors in Latin America and the Caribbean have rushed to withdraw money from banks linked to US billionaire Allen Stanford after he was charged over an alleged $8bn fraud.
Customers in the Caribbean island of Antigua, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and other nations besieged Stanford banks to try to withdraw money.
- Obama’s housing plan | Salon News – To present its $275 billion plan to right the housing market, the White House airlifted President Obama into Mesa, Ariz., as close to dead center of the real estate collapse as you get — 6 percent of houses in the Phoenix area were foreclosed on last year. Rather than letting a Cabinet secretary roll out the details, as the administration did with its Wall Street proposals earlier this month, Obama took the lead himself. And the plan impressed just about everyone who looked at the details Wednesday; even the stock markets managed to avoid collapsing in reaction, a sharp contrast to the way Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's presentation on the Wall Street plan landed two weeks ago.
- The Technium: The Unabomber Was Right – The truth of Kaczynski’s observations does not absolve him of his murders, or justify his insane hatred. Kaczynski saw something in technology that caused him to lash out with violence, but despite his mental imbalance, he was able to articulate that view with surprising clarity his sprawling, infamous 35,000-word manifesto. Kaczynski murdered three people (and injured 23 more) in order to get this manifesto published. His despicable desperation and crimes hide a critique that has gained a minority following by other luddites. The center section of his argument is clear, remarkably so, given his cranky personal grievances against leftists that bookend his rant. Here, in meticulous, scholarly precision, Kaczynski makes his primary claim that “freedom and technological progress are incompatible,” and that therefore technological progress must be undone.
- Libertarianism in an Age of Economic Crisis: Why being truculent, oppositional, and hard to pigeonhole are not signs of ideological death – Reason Magazine – The libertarian preference for hands-off policies during times of perceived crises, both domestic and international, is often parried by pointing to the fecklessness and irresponsibility of hand-sitting when confronted with serious problems—even whan those problems were caused by years or decades of government not having a hands-off policy. (It’s still worth remembering that it is not yet clear that the Current Crisis will end up much worse than other recessions most adults have lived through).
- Star Wars live-action TV series – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – The production will focus on minor characters from the Star Wars galaxy, rather than the main characters from the films. Originally, 100 one hour-long episodes were proposed, but at Celebration Europe in July 2007, producer Rick McCallum explained that it may run up to 400 episodes, and "it’s something that can go on for years and years. One of the ideas is that we’ll have multiple series going on in about two or three years' time."[5] This supports a description given by Lucas as "one show that will split into four shows, focusing on different characters."[6]
Lucas had stated that the series will air on HBO, describing it as "Deadwood meets The Sopranos in space."[7]
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