vie privée en allemagne, modèles de blogs contre paiement, afghanistan, jeux vidéos, etc.

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soufron

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Feb 27, 2008, 3:50:21 PM2/27/08
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Internet : 
Politique :
Jeux vidéos :
  • Chris Kohler de Wired se plaint que 5h de jeu, ce n'est pas assez : God of War PSP : Really, Really Short
  • Du coup, j'ai réagi de mon coté : Pourquoi les jeux vidéos s’adressent toujours au même public, ou pourquoi certains critiques reprochent à God of War d’être un jeu trop court ?
  • A voir absolument : un jeu de rôle en ligne généré en partie automatiquement, un peu à la façon dont fonctionnait "elite" autrefois : Love : is the procedurally-generated MMO


      • Pour une fois….


        Cliquez sur l’image pour le diaporama NYT

      "


      Parlons de l’Afghanistan. J’attire votre attention sur cet article du New York Times narrant les opérations dans la Korengal Valley, ainsi que sur les photos qui l’accompagnent. Le commandant d’unité de la compagnie Bravo du 2nd Bataillon/503ème régiment d’infanterie (des paras) se bat dans une zone où le soutien de la population est inexistant. Une façon de rappeler que la contre-insurrection n’a pas de “modèle” ni de “bonnes pratiques”, mais qu’elle dépend avant tout du contexte précis du théâtre.


      Par ailleurs, la Military Review fait paraître ce matin un article sur la TF DEVIL en Afghanistan.

      "

      Voir en ligne : Pour une fois….


    Le gouvernement allemand n’a pas le droit d’espionner les ordinateurs, juge la Cour constitutionnelle fédérale



    "La Cour constitutionnelle fédérale, a jugé mercredi que le gouvernement n'avait pas le droit d'utiliser des logiciels semblables à des virus ou tout autre moyen pour espionner les disques durs des ordinateurs de terroristes ou de criminels présumés."

    Voir en ligne : Le gouvernement allemand n'a pas le droit d'espionner les ordinateurs, juge la Cour constitutionnelle fédérale

    Blog Network MyKinda May Be Pulling A BlogNation - Writers Going Unpaid



    "

    Anyone who watched the BlogNation implosion last year certainly doesn’t want to see a rerun of that particular debacle. But there are worrying signs coming from Romania-based blog network MyKinda that suggest the young startup is facing some of the same cash flow issues that plagued BlogNation.


    Like BlogNation, MyKinda is a network of country-specific blogs. It’s somewhat different in that the blogs are written in local languages (BlogNation was all English), and it covers a wider variety of topics (BlogNation was tech news only, MyKinda covers business, politics, culture, lifestyle, science and tech/gadgets). MyKinda launched blogs in Romania, Russia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine.


    The two networks have a common founder in Lee Wilkins, although Wilkins left BlogNation early on under allegedly questionable circumstances (I wrote about some of the issues here). As BlogNation’s debts rose and funding failed to happen, Wilkins started MyKinda to compete head on.


    The biggest issue with Blognation was that writers went half a year or more without pay, while being told by the company that funding was imminent, or had already happened. The funding never happened, and the company folded in December. Writers were owed, by some estimates, as much as $200,000 in aggregate.


    Now MyKinda is falling behind on payments to writers too, although on a much smaller scale. And to Wilkins credit, he seems to be dealing with the problems in a much more orderly fashion than BlogNation did. He’s shut all but the Romanian blogs, he says in a blog post. And he promises to pay the writers of the other blogs what they are owed - around €11,500. In an email to me, he writes:


    As you may know we launched Russia and Bulgaria on Sept 16th ‘07. Unfortunately, at the beginning of February, I decided to close down RU & BG to focus efforts on Romania, and because RU & BG were burning a lot of cash. €15-20k per month. Closing these two countries (along with Ukraine) was very tough, as it dented plans.


    I close them because I am bootstrapping MyKinda alone by myself, and right now I cannot keep it all going. I am not saying we are heading to the deadpool. When closing RU & BG, I occurred debts of approx €6k for RU & €5k for BG. €500 for Ukraine. The past month we have been going through a little cost cutting here @ MK, as we are generating alot of uniques/visitors.


    And we are nothing like Blognation, the debts occured for RU & BG were for January 2008 until closing them in February. I have never lied to my people, maybe a little lack of communication yes, but lying, no! I should’ve, in hindsight, communicated earlier that I couldn’t keep RU & BG going, but I had hopes of being in a position to finance it myself. Right now, I am in the process of making calls, to get my people their money asap, as i promised. I am not a thief, nor am i liar. These people delivered for me, I will deliver my promise to them.


    More as this develops, but MyKinda is on DeadPool watch.


    Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0





    "

    Voir en ligne : Blog Network MyKinda May Be Pulling A BlogNation - Writers Going Unpaid

    US Government Looking for Terrorists... In Virtual Worlds



    "

    I've read this story in Wired a couple of times, the Secrecy News blog entry from a few days ago that it came from, and even went and looked at the (unclassified) original report (PDF) from the Office of the  Director of National Intelligence to Congress discussing it.  I still don't know what to make of this.  From the report:

    Reynard is a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social
    (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale
    online games and their implications for the Intelligence Community.

    "[The project will ] conduct unclassified research in a public virtual world environment.
    The research will use publicly available data and will begin with
    observational studies to establish baseline normative behaviors."

    Perhaps a bit more pointedly (bordering on bizarrely), the report says that

    "The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are
    generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the
    emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and
    gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned
    to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious
    behavior and actions in the virtual world.    " [emphasis added]

    I
    have to admit I'm unclear as to what might constitute "suspicious
    behavior" in virtual worlds, much less behavior indicative of terrorist motivations
    -- would that be killing as many Night Elves as possible in a
    battlegrounds session in WoW, emerging as a successful and highly
    profitable mole in EVE Online, or just using pose balls to role-play
    anatomically unlikely scenarios with someone using a hedgehog avatar in
    Second Life? 



    Is this new seedling program something we should be concerned about
    (Big Brother in your virtual world, watching your ganking, duping,
    gold-farming, cybersexing ways), something we should roll our eyes at
    (checking to make sure this didn't come from The Onion), or something
    we should hail as an interesting new way for academics to get yet
    another character to level 70 -- in the name of research? 

    "

    Voir en ligne : US Government Looking for Terrorists... In Virtual Worlds

    Web Ads May Be at Risk in Slowdown



    "Consumer clicks on Google search ads fell 7% in January, suggesting the broader economic slowdown is spreading to Internet advertising.



    "

    Voir en ligne : Web Ads May Be at Risk in Slowdown

    God of War PSP : Really, Really Short



    "

    Gowclear



    Here's my God of War: Chains of Olympus clear time. You can add on roughly another half an hour to this, as I played the first half of the game on a preview disc and then had to start again on the review code.



    But even then, Chains of Olympus is still really short at just under five hours. I'd be a little more forgiving of this if the game was jam-packed full of holy-shit moments like previous God of War games, but it just isn't.



    Yes, it's a very good game that perfectly replicates the feel of GoW's combat on the portable. But it's also hard to ignore that by the end of the game, any semblance of creative level design goes out the window, replaced with a never-ending gauntlet of big open rooms filled with enemies.



    I'll write a full review closer to the game's March 4 release date, but for now: Know that it's firmly in the top tier of PSP products, but that it's also a bite-sized God of War in more ways than just the screen dimensions.



    See Also:









    "

    Voir en ligne : God of War PSP: Really, Really Short

    What Happened To Open Source Research ?



    ""Open content is still in its infancy and faces some technical and cultural challenges that affect its widespread adoption. People in higher education are accessing OER using numerous technologies, software applications, and Web sites. Content can be found in dozens and dozens of different formats. Meanwhile, some content is behind firewalls, while other content simply requires the user to create a free account, and some is truly open - like Wikipedia."
    InsideHigherEd 02/26/08"

    Voir en ligne : What Happened To Open Source Research?

    Andy Borowitz : Cash-rich Obama Buys Yahoo



    "

    Flush with cash after a deluge of online donations, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) stunned the business world today by outbidding Microsoft for the Internet giant Yahoo.



    The purchase of Yahoo is believed to be the largest acquisition of a multibillion-dollar company ever by a Democratic presidential candidate, industry experts said.



    A spokesman for Microsoft at the company's Redmond, Washington headquarters acknowledged that the company was "disappointed" to lose Yahoo to Sen. Obama, but added, "We can't really be mad at him, because we love him so."



    The news of Sen. Obama's $48 billion offer for Yahoo sent a shudder through Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY)'s campaign, which for the past six weeks has been subsisting on Ramen noodles.



    In his televised debate in Cleveland, Ohio with Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama said that he was able to purchase Yahoo because his campaign was reaping online donations averaging $1.8 billion a day.



    Mr. Obama also offered to "personally hire" 2 million Ohioans to do odd jobs around his campaign headquarters.



    "People say, can we really come up with enough errands for 2 million Ohioans to do?" he said. "Yes we can."



    Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick praised Sen. Obama's plan, telling reporters, "His campaign is more than just words, he is offering people a real opportunity to go on a Starbucks run."



    Sen. Obama later added, "My campaign is more than just words, I am offering people a real opportunity to go on a Starbucks run."



    Elsewhere, President Bush said that the economy was not in a recession, leading economists to conclude that the economy was in a recession.



    Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com. He is the host of "Countdown to '08" at the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday, May 13 at 8 PM with his special guests Susie Essman (HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Jeffrey Toobin (CNN, bestselling author of The Nine. For tickets, go to 92y.org.






    "

    Voir en ligne : Andy Borowitz: Cash-rich Obama Buys Yahoo

    If IP Is Property, Where Is the Property Tax ?



    "nweaver writes "In a response to the LA Times editorial on copyright which we discussed a week ago, the paper published a response arguing: 'If Intellectual Property is actually property, why isn't it covered by a property tax?' If copyright maintenance involved paying a fee and registration, this would keep Mickey Mouse safely protected by copyright, while ensuring that works that are no longer economically relevant to the copyright holder pass into the public domain, where the residual social value can serve the real purpose of copyright: to enhance the progress of science and useful arts. Disclaimer: the author is my father."

    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


    "

    Voir en ligne : If IP Is Property, Where Is the Property Tax?

    Antitrust : la Commission inflige à Microsoft une amende de 899 millions € pour non-respect de la décision de mars 2004



    "IP/08/318
    Bruxelles, le 27 février 2008
    Antitrust: la Commission inflige à
    Microsoft une amende de 899 millions € pour non-respect de la
    décision de mars 2004
    La Commission européenne a infligé une
    amende de 899 millions € à Microsoft pour ne pas avoir
    rempli les obligations qui lui incombent en vertu de la décision de la
    Commission de mars 2004 (voir <a
    href="http://europa."

    Voir en ligne : Antitrust: la Commission inflige à Microsoft une amende de 899 millions € pour non-respect de la décision de mars 2004

    Google Reports Awful January



    "

    Comscore reported shockingly bad US paid click performance for Google in January: flat growth year-over-year versus a 25% increase in Q4. Even if Comscore is only half right, this is a disaster.



    Flash note from analyst Bob Peck at Bear Stearns:



    comScore reported 532mn domestic paid clicks in Jan. 08, flat YoY, but down 12% sequentially (Jan. 08 vs. Oct. Oct. 07). The click through rate was the lowest since comScore stated reporting this data and was down 200bp from levels in 4Q and down 400bps from levels in 1Q of last year. While this is one data point for domestic google.com only and from one source, which may or may not be accurate, it is a concerning data point and somewhat reflects what we have heard from SEMs - that they were not seeing a high volume of clicks from consumers possibly due to the economic slowdown.

    Note that Google reported a 30% YoY growth rate in overall (global) paid leads in 4Q07 and comScore reported growth of 25% YoY for domestic google.com paid leads for 4Q. While not an apples-to-apples comparison, we will continue to monitor the comScore numbers for Feb and Mar before definitive conclusions can be drawn.



    This report is so shocking it bears repeating: ComScore said Google's US revenue units (paid clicks) grew 25% last quarter--a quarter that disappointed Wall Street. In January, the same source, ComScore, says the same revenue units were flat.






    "

    Voir en ligne : Google Reports Awful January

    Love : is the procedurally-generated MMO



    "

    A one-man-made mini-MMO, including a procedurally generated universe...? Rossignol's dug up a gem here:

    The game itself, dubbed Love
    (as in For The Love Of Game Development), is an exploration-based
    moderately-multiplayer FPS with astounding impressionistic visuals and
    a procedurally generated universe    . Since Steenberg is a one man show,
    he’s relying on clever maths to build the world for him and then clever
    gamers to come in and help him figure out where to take it, and what to
    do with it.

    Me_gdc_screen_4




    Bloody hell this sounds interesting. Rossignol continues:

    So far he’s already populated it with weird animals and wondrous,
    gaseous visuals, and he intends to build the world into a kind of
    communal adventure, where gamers work together to furnish a central
    village, defend it from enemy attack, and explore the surround world
    and its many dungeons.

    He's giddy with the potential - exciting stuff! - and the game's creator claims he only needs 200 subscribers to make the game worth running. Imagine that. Obviously he'll get a whole ton more.. but mini-MMOs like private clubs? That's a strange thought too.



    "

    Voir en ligne : Love: is the procedurally-generated MMO

    The Daily Poll : What’s Wrong at Google ?



    "


    Remember all of those stories about Google passing symbolic share price milestones such as $600 and $700? At its peak in November, Google was trading at $747.27/share, carrying a market value of more than $234 billion.


    How times have changed. Three months later, Google sits around $450/share, and has lost nearly $100 billion in market value. Today, shares are down another 7%, on word from comScore that the amount of Google ads that users are clicking fell 7% from December to January.


    google


    In addition to the decline in paid clicks, I’ve heard several arguments both on the financial news networks and on various blogs as to why Google is tanking. For one, there’s the idea that as the economy cools, people are going to be spending less, and hence, clicking fewer ads. There’s also the lingering concern that Google has lost focus, expanding into areas like mobile and trans-pacific cable (there’s also the somewhat hypocritical argument that Google has no real revenue streams other than paid clicks).


    Personally, I’d also argue that the quality of ads has gone down through the years, as complex search marketing and affiliate programs buy an increasing amount of space in search results, hence making it harder to find the best places to shop. In the past, I’d often find the ads more valuable than the search results for certain queries; this has definitely not been the case in the last year or two, at least in my experience.


    Now it’s your turn to be the analyst. Today’s poll:






      Why is Google's stock tanking?





      • Declining Paid Click Business



      • The Weakening Economy



      • Lack of Focus



      • Lack of Revenue Streams



      • Declining Quality



      • It's Overvalued!



      • Irrational Investor Fear





      View Results






    ShareThis







    "

    Voir en ligne : The Daily Poll: What’s Wrong at Google?


Daily Veille

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Feb 27, 2008, 9:55:02 AM2/27/08
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