Kinte

Filed under: Recession

The House finally passed its financial regulatory reform bill today by a 21-vote margin. Apparently, there are 202 members of the House, Republicans and Democrats, who aren't interested in clamping down on the too-big-to-fail financials that helped to get us into this mess. While there are a lot of great things in the bill, there are also some gigantic loopholes.

Continue reading House passes bank regulatory reform bill, complete with a gaping loophole

House passes bank regulatory reform bill, complete with a gaping loophole originally appeared on WalletPop Blog on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Because nothing says "I ain't afraid of no recession" like plopping down an excess amount of Benjamins for a Bluetooth earpiece, Vertu has unveiled its V accessories collection. $780 gets you a Bluetooth 2.1-compliant earpiece with 6 hours of charge time (same one we saw hit the FCC recently, we suspect), $490 for a USB memory card reader that as a consolation prize comes with a 2GB microSD card, and as for the ballpoint pen, asking price is a cool $330. For all three purchases, it's recommended you purchase the special leather case for protection -- and if these gifts are already comfortably in your price range, hey, why not?

[Thanks, Shayjd]

Vertu V makes no concessions: $730 BT headset, $490 card reader, and $330 ballpoint pen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ONM has posted the first English screens of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, coming to North America and Europe in spring 2010. The site highlights the newly redesigned Pokedex, which comes in both red and pink, and enables touchscreen-based obsessive browsing of your collection. Also visible: your starter Pokemon, who now follows you around like Pikachu in Pokémon Yellow.

There's still no mention of the PokeWalker accessory, unfortunately, making it increasingly likely that the Pokemon-training pedometer will be left out of the Western release.

Pokemon remake screens, now in English originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: Joystiq [Nintendo]]

Hopefully you haven't exceeded your daily allowance of the letter 'i' yet this morning; this post could push you into CamelCase overload. British electronics maker Cello has announced iViewer, a line of LCD HTDVs available in £399 ($650) 26- and £499 ($815) 32-inch models that will directly stream BBC's iPlayer, no silly gaming console or set-top box required. They'll also stream a variety of other digital channels, including YouTube and American CNN -- so why is it that Americans still can't stream content from the Beeb? Sets will be selling soon exclusively at Marks and Spencer stores, and would have been available months ago if not for a delay thanks to an unidentified but apparently American chip maker. Sure, blame the US. Everything's our fault.

BBC's iPlayer streams to Cello iViewer HDTVs, those iElsewhere get iNothing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The countdown to CES continues, but the big news this week is on the regulatory and industry side, as the FCC tries to figure out where CableCARD is going wrong and what to do about it, and Comcast buys into NBC. We also take on the troubles of going all digital with this week's Ask Engadget HD question, and also show you what an SSD can and can't do for a HTPC. Sony's making the World Cup a part of its 3D showcase, is that enough to get us excited about soccer? Next we go behind the scenes at Sharp, while discussing plasma burn in and Universal's new flipper combo discs before closing out with the latest attempt at relevancy for BD-Live.

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Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh, Richard Lawler

Producer: Trent Wolbe

Program
00:00:45 - Comments from Engadget HD Podcast 165
00:02:30 - Hell freezes over, the FCC admits that CableCARD is a failure
00:16:55- Time Warner wants to know if it should get tough about rate hikes
00:22:17 - Poll: How do you feel about Comcast buying NBC?
00:30:40 - Ask Engadget HD: Best video encoding process to maximize quality & compatibility?
00:35:22 - SSD drives don't help dedicated Windows Media Center PCs much
00:42:55 - Sony and FIFA team up to make the World Cup 3D
00:48:36 - Inside Sharp's new LCD factory, we can see our next HDTV from here
00:50:12 - The HD Guru tries to burn-in a plasma, but fails
00:57:03 - Universal's BD-59 Blu-ray / DVD flip discs to debut on Bourne trilogy releases
01:02:55 - Terminator: Salvation's McG hosts the first audio Blu-ray director's chat session tonight

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Filed under: Podcasts

Engadget HD Podcast 166 - 12.08.2009 originally appeared on Engadget HD on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bible Adventures, the first console title from Left Behind Games, will "educate young children by teaching them academic lessons vital to early childhood development through Bible stories." Based on the Charlie Church Mouse series, the game will not only span both the Old and New Testament, but should also teach mathematics, spelling and "reasoning skills."

Left Behind CEO Troy Lyndon noted (via GamePolitics) that expanding their offerings to home consoles should expand not only their reach, but their wallets. "We expect our financial projections to grow exponentially as we transition from a PC game developer to a Wii & Xbox developer."

But what about PS3 owners? Well ... they can go to hell.

Bible Adventures coming to Wii, Xbox 360 from Left Behind originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: Joystiq [Nintendo]]

Ravius over at Kill Ten Rats ruminates on the importance of reputation in these very social games that we're playing with each other, and it resonated with me in terms of a few different things going on in World of Warcraft right now. We've talked lots before about ninjas and how that back-and-forth works -- in that case, karma is directly driven by what other people think of you, and of course that's seen more weakly in lots of other places around the game, including guild recruitment, your friends list, and just the general server at large.

Ravius talks mostly about the negative reputations we earn, and certainly that's a powerful motivator for a lot of people. But positive reputation is also a strong force in this game -- I'm interested to see how we deal with earning and keeping positive reputation in the new Dungeon Finder and eventually the Battle.net system. Gone may be the days when you build up a good reputation by saying "remember me if you need a good DPS" at the end of a run. It'll be interesting to see what methods we replace that one with.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Guilds, Instances, Raiding

How reputation governs the game originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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