Babelgum - another new, new TV thing
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Joost like Joost So P2P TV services really do conform to the proverbial bus clich&amp;eacute: you wait ages for one, then loads of clich&amp;eacutes come along at once.â¦
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Tycho:  Rhythm games aren't my forte, but I have a lot of inbuilt experience with meter which helps me fake it until I can build genuine skill.  And, as rhythm elements have crept into the entire medium, Tycho stock has been in a boom phase.  It's understandable, then, that while I soar and illuminate - and Gabriel sputters, bound to earth - tensions related to my prowess have begun to burn red-hot.  That is, until they cool again.  These things have a way of working themselves out in the fullness of time.          There's an incredible article over at Wired this month (and possibly also in the magazine?) about the Bungie's psychological approach to game design.  What a tremendous challenge it must be to retain authorial control in such a case!  As someone whose output is rarely screened by any agency, the whole thing gave me chills.  The right to fail nobly in a creative endeavor (as we sometimes do) is such a powerful luxury.  No such luxury may be extended to them, upon whose toil an entire platform rests.  God keep me from such a fate.          I keep hearing that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption isn't being promoted very well, but the person saying this always seems to know about it, and then when people share this complaint in the thread those people also seem to be "in the know."  It ships on the twenty-seventh of August, if you weren't aware - but since you almost certainly are, we needn't dwell on it.  What we should be dwelling on are the series of teaser vids that Retro has been trickling out.  Metroid's largely mysterious heroine has always been a huge draw for me, and going into deep detail about the character would actually damage the mystique.  But the universe she operates in need not be vague, which is why these clips are such a rich meal:  there's the Aurora Unit trailer that modernizes ancient Metroid canon in a classy way, and there's a treat at the end of the Valhalla trailer that ties it all together.  They both cover a setting that has gotten darker and more sophisticated, tones we don't typically associate with Nintendo.       We like to get kicks in on the post-Harmonix Guitar Hero, partly based on their "wacky" multiplayer concept - which ordinary gamers will probably love - but also out of a sort of tribal loyalty.  This having been established, they've built an authentically heroic tracklist that really has a lot of beef.  Going from the most recent Rock Band announcement out of Leipzig, both versions appear to have Radiohead's "Creep" and the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," which is something of a comfort.  After seeing different songs on each game from Metallica and The Rolling Stones, I wasn't sure if they were already traveling down the catalogues securing exclusive weaponry.  I hope that the labels in this case see the old wisdom of arming both sides.
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Also: Chevy Volt: GM's 'moon shot'. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
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With a new fall season getting under way, will audiences leave behind the tyranny of the broadcast schedule and make up their own fall television schedule by downloading?
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Perl script that automatically searches for new episodes of your favorite TV shows and downloads the corresponding NZB files from various free sources on the internet.   This release is mostly just to update the .shows file and the README.  I was sleepy, and I stupidly said that you do not have to have the  element in your shows file.  Turns out I'm just an idiot, and you do.  I have updated the .shows file to include the proper template for most shows, which is %name%.S%season%E%episode%  Sorry about that!  I also started a code optimization run which will hopefully over time make things run faster and more efficiently.  I just picked off the low hanging fruit on this release, because I wanted to get the updated README out before too many people had problems.
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As you may recall from my last entry, I exchanged my cable box from a Scientific Atlanta 8000HD to a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD.  The latter, new box continues to output a signal from the cable connection even if I have it in HDTV mode.  It probably also continues to output AVI and S-Video.  This finally opened up a way for me to use my cable box with a MythTV box.   Thanks to a serious (and mysterious) spinal injury (I say mysterious because I haven't figured out how I did the damage), I can only work on the project for a half hour at a time, at most.  I have discovered some interesting things in those short segments.
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Tycho:  With PAX coming up this weekend (!!!), we didn't really have time on Friday to invest in Virgil's Wikiscanner - that mystical oracle that takes a raw IP range and then excretes a list of that organization's Wikipedia edits.  This is the pulsing, possibly Martian device that dished up last week's awesome Electronic Arts edits.    I wasn't sure if we should feel sorry for them or not - now that EA is situated in the number two slot, does that make them the scrappy underdog? - but I quickly realized it probably doesn't matter.  They can come right out and say "Yes, we edit it all the time," mischaracterize the nature of the edits, and by the time it's on the second page the events in question never happened.  People don't remember anything these days that isn't on the first page of their feed aggregators. In any case, the entire affair is talking place  on Wikipedia.  Kudzu will grow over the propaganda soon enough.    Though time was indeed in short supply, we did fritter some portion of it pawing through ancient email headers, scraping for filth on old enemies.  Or enemies with whom we have resumed talks.  Or enemies who are now friends!  Even people I hope to make enemies in the future by my careless commentary must fall beneath the scanner's baleful eye.    Like a chugging trawler, we hauled up net after net of treasure onto the deck, sifting it on hands and knees.  I'd never expose it, of course - sparking a desperate arms race to find self-serving commentary is a conflict I'm likely to lose.  And with the deep catalogue of nemeses we've inspired worldwide (and even below the world, in the warrens of the pale Gambrya, where hate is eternal) it's not what I'd call a fabulous scenario.  For us, at least; no doubt, our foes have already begun their malevolent harvest.
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Microsoft's new internet streaming service attempts to replicate terrestrial stations, without all the annoying chatter -- and without permission. By Randy Dotinga.
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It's not very often that you see something new in News.  News is not exactly new technology, but when personal computers came along, and then widespread networking, it created a whole new playing field for news, that has shaken things up for most of my life. Change comes in fits at starts. First there was the web, then RSS, and now I think we're on the cusp of another bit of change. If you want to see what I think it looks like, check out the home page of nytimesriver.com. But that's not the end of the story. A flat completely chronologic view of news probably isn't enough. And earlier this month at a meeting in NY, two engineers at the NY Times set me off in a new direction, with a very simple bit of advice. They told me to look in the HTML source code of their stories. When I did I saw they had applied a taxonomy to their news flow, and this opened the door to what I would like to show you today -- an outline view of the news.  http://nytimesriver.com/outline/  I believe it's fairly self-explanatory.  The topics are arranged in order of frequency in today's news.  In a previous rendering, the stories were shown in a histogram, but this view I think is much better. You can still see how many pieces relate to the indicated topic, but by clicking on the plus next to each topic, you can actually see the headlines and descriptions, and if you want more you can click through to the full stories. (Initially, the outline was sorted by frequency, with the most frequently occurring keyword appearing first. I changed it, based on feedback, to be alphabetic.) Now, there's still more to do, I showed this to a number of people during the weekend and got some excellent clues on ideas to pursue next, and I will do that. Further, in the process of exploring this, I've been shown the work of other developers who discovered the keywords on their own, and one in particular is very interesting. I'm hoping that these projects will come public so I can show them to you and tell you what I think they mean. This is what I live for, professionally -- the sense of being somewhere with great unexplored potential, a virgin landscape of the intellect. I'm never happier than when I get to play in such a place.  Om Malik: A new way to view news. Please comment on the screen shot page.
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Also: Microsoft plans new BizTalk release for this year. [News.com Extra]
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It's been a peculiar TV season. More than usual. This one so far has been a little of everything: good, bad, innovative, disappointing, surprising, and, ultimately, one giant learning experience for the people who make TV.  And that's one of the surprises right there.
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Generally, Bad Language is against awards shows. The TelePrompTer puffery and please-buy/see-my-latest-CD/DVD appearances are nauseating at best. But it's our job to report on all things pop culture. So we watch. And we watch. And we fall asleep. Then we wake up and watch again.
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By Molly Willow, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio  Sep. 13--Hope you don't have plans next week: Your television needs you.
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Our day-by-day guide to the fall TV season: Thursdays
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By Alan Pergament  It is deja vu all over again. Many of the pilots for the new television season -- especially on NBC and ABC -- are so good, that I'm having a "Lost"-like flashback to my first year as a television critic.
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Gabe: I'm pretty frustrated with the Dunder Mifflin Infinity ARG. The site functionality is just trash. The biggest offense is the piece of shit forum they've got. It's the one way for the whole branch to talk together and it's absolute crap. Also I still can't hire new employees. There's almost 1500 people waiting to join the Spokane branch but trying to hire anymore than two at a time breaks the site for me. I contacted tech support last week and never heard back. A couple people have suggested that the website being shitty is on purpose. I don't know if I'm ready to believe it's all some ironic joke. What I do know is that interacting with their game is frustrating and I'm not sure I want to bother with it anymore.
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Fox will post episodes this week of returning series such as 'âPrison Breakâ' and 'âBones,â' along with new shows such as 'âK-Ville.â'