Airline Client: “You quoted us for 8 days of 2D graphics. I think that’s way too much.”

Me: “It includes revisions.”

Airline Client: “Well, if you do everything perfectly and we don’t want to change anything, can you charge us less?”

Colleague: “If your airline flew us to London and got us there 10 minutes ahead of schedule, would everyone on the plane get a refund?”

(author unknown)12990946534841410421165881051260728091191481936269176008269204041358293101432767078883032261702997790302767748080479054916850037460690408296127672040960320651411733980480308831419218272463801296813481101278070060919775521024549708432512255012564530915931524937176427391969040881470408538528982908763204324618082286720448181569204315101123631669724954289171912611223513968671203948115275333311125016560783936760674902442014652394920158690528165245207155558442321361496225329215492706965465356351827228166964292352116835820943999883821892664310819158844817089501015186873078088828360605713451072185254801200585139117666335092445170513790396350934417565535448379915388695863781359685010889866779898494041322723318765691875702564104651137679070159598004892337330070388178730461482869410434923705196586092

Games giant Activision has shaken up production of its best-selling Call of Duty franchise amid claims of insubordination from senior executives - marking the second major change at the publisher in under a month.

In a terse announcement on Tuesday, the company said that it would be creating a new unit to develop future titles in the series, potentially replacing games studio Infinity Ward, which it bought in 2003.

It also confirmed reports that Infinity Ward's most senior executives, Jason Ward and Vince Zampella, had left the company.

In a regulatory filing, Activision cited "breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward" and said that "this matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation".

The company has refused to comment further on the issue, and has remained silent about reports that security staff were called into Infinity Ward's Californian headquarters on Monday.

The reshuffle took industry insiders by surprise, coming just months after the latest installment of Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 - became the biggest entertainment launch in history by making $310m on its first day.

Call of Duty - a 3D combat simulation spanning world war two and more modern conflicts - has been one of the most successful video game franchises in history, bringing in more than $3bn in sales since the first title came out in 2003.

The release last year of Modern Warfare 2, the latest instalment, was hailed as a major event and sold almost 1.8m copies in the UK in its first week alone. Such was the title's influence, that other publishers took the unprecedented step of pushing back their own releases until after Christmas in order to avoid being crushed.

Despite these successes, however, the game has not been without its critics. Modern Warfare 2, in particular, came in for scrutiny when it emerged that one mission allows players to join a gang of Russian terrorists as they attack an airport.

The leaking of footage led a string of protesters, including anti-games MP Keith Vaz, to say the game left them "shocked" and "concerned" about the levels of violence.

The abrupt decision to change control of Call of Duty is not the only sign of turmoil at the company, a gigantic games conglomerate formed by 2008's £10bn merger between Californian publisher Activision and the games unit of French media company Vivendi.

Last month the head of the company's Guitar Hero franchise, Dan Rosensweig, departed after less than a year in charge.

Reports of difficulties between senior executive have been circulating for some time, with West telling Official PlayStation Magazine last year that "we had to fight for everything" in developing new versions of the game.

Although replacing the producers of a major franchise marks a significant risk for Activision, industry analysts suggested the company may have been working to prevent future conflict.

"A greater risk would be whether or not the two heads end up taking more talent away [from Activision], or the whole team leaves," said Shawn Milne of Janney Capital Markets.

• Games

Bobbie Johnson
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Bobbie Johnson

Yesterday, Valve issued an update to its 2007 first-person puzzle game Portal, adding exactly one new Steam achievement and 26 audio transmissions that players could listen to via in-game radios. So started an impressive puzzle.

Instead of listening to those transmissions in-game, members of various web forums, including the Steam, Facepunch and Something Awful forums—who we credit with the following discoveries—accessed them through more standard file system digging. Some were easily identifiable Morse Code recordings while the majority were SSTV (or slow-scan television) encoded transmissions.

The Morse code audio files included the following information.

1. interior transmission active external data line active message digest active
5. 9e107d9d372bb6821bd91d3542a419d6
12. system data dump active user backup active password backup active
17. beep beeeep beep beep beeeep beeeep beeeep beep beeeep beep beep

File 5 is a doubly encoded, the MD5 encrypted string "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." File 17 was Morse Code for Morse Code for "LOL." Good times.

The remaining sound files were translated from audio to a series of 22 images, which had the appearance of stills from security cameras installed at Aperture Science, the setting of the original Portal. Many of those images contained shots of numbers and letters from keyboards, chalkboards and whiteboards, as well as the odd equation or formula, requiring the mob of puzzle solvers to tap into their calculus and engineering backgrounds.

Click for super huge size

The mob eventually put those characters together to form the string 9459C6CAC8C203B8128B7CC63068D4FD which itself was an encoded phone number for a Bulletin Board Service. That meant dusting off a few modems, dialing up Valve's BBS, logging in and letting a mix of ASCII art and text files stream.

That text dump may offer some of our first low-fidelity peeks at the next Portal and gives us a bit of insight into Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson. First, the artwork, which contains (here's the word again) encoded visuals that may be familiar to the Portal player.

In the above image, we get a peek at an ASCII version of GlaDOS, a few shots of the research facility and what appears to be two robots holding hands. There's also a confidential document detailing "Low Risk" Human Resource Acquisitions, including hobos, orphans, psychiatric patients and senior citizens.

The above features another peek at GlaDOS, a trio of diagrams and a heart shaped "anomalous emotional response" detection warning.

Finally, two recognizable Portal items, GlaDOS (again) and a pair of automated turrets, among other things, plus a few memorandums from Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson.

CJohnson writes:

"…remind you that APerture Science is built on three pillars. Pillar one: Science without results is just witchcraft. Pillar two: Get results or you're fired. Pillar three: if you suspect a coworker of bin' a witch, report them immediately. I cannot stress that enough. Witchcraft will not be tolerated."

"A lot of you have been raising concerns about the so-called "dangers" of what we're all doing here. The beancounters told me to tell you that as of today, testing will no longer be as mandatory or as dangerous. That's not gonna happen and here's the reason."

"Science isn't about why, it's about why not. You ask: Why is so much of our science dangerous? I say: Why not marry safe science if you love it so much. In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you in the butt on the way out, because you are fired."

"Plus, in the event of your death, I personally guarantee that, thanks to the form you were required to sign this morning, your family will not suffer the indignities of a prolonged and costly legal battle against Aperture Science. Trust me, I am rich, and it is a burden I would not wish on anyone."

One theory being bandied about by forumgoers is the version of GlaDOS responding from the BBS, which is 3.11, is a reference to March 11, the date that Valve will supposedly reveal more about what this Portal puzzle is all about. It's also the date the Valve founder Gabe Newell will receive his Pioneer Award at this year's Game Developers Conference Awards.

There may be more, so let us know if we missed anything in this summary.

Update: Reader Biomanware dropped this image from HL2.net in the comments, making some degree of sense of the visually nonsensical ASCII art.

Michael McWhertor07081067725743342068123221694497163549721796438886574617109117616515438655475199057597681457421976090112060459702206718117052800745285913339063022929776121630831431424270230248002512078296549135493968033593477471946764891562857837202032653912184104689266750220148965036704949273410444427151819216056015990646921812056155033418129586169127351626197471559797568709025358002626471483063930402689491844601693178393026941487114350669464039158263128127171828139107660501232864064882602402312042911823059098142532748217774501000367340937248420063318320954090883214711126870629593135362990473934638420961119405826391189270141616112443141040794078681003060823814368137214760204684461625353101006958356318703590098382534844002246907358073874654487860070960803228294670871443473653781919560808015824821144839368130770527128221470960147870367024608077307965195535372260569

Valve's brilliant first-person puzzler Portal has just been updated. Not normally a big deal, but when that update adds a new, mysterious Steam achievement and some hidden radio transmissions and this is Valve we're dealing with, we're right to be curious.

Today's Portal update, officially, features the following addition: "Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations." Not officially noted there is the new Steam achievement "Transmission Received" which goes undescribed by the developer, but involves the use of Portal's in-game radios.

Also included, as spotted by Steam forumgoers are a bunch of new sound files, all prefaced with the word "dinosaur." According to members there, those sound files feature Morse code encoded transmissions.

While we have no idea at this point what Valve is planning—the Steam mob is currently pounding away at a solution and Morse code experts are encouraged to join the fray—we wouldn't be surprised if the Half-Life and Left 4 Dead developer was planning a Portal related announcement. If it were to announce Portal 2, we wouldn't be surprised. If it were to announce a sequel to one of its games in its own game, we'd simply be impressed.

Given the close relationship between Portal and Half-Life, we could also be looking at a separate game announcement, like the long-awaited Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Whatever the case, we're excited and keeping a close eye on updates.

Update: New sound files, including this new computerized voiceover from something that is not GlaDOS and these transmissions, have been making their way to YouTube from users. Give 'em a listen.

The game continues, with those sound files containing data for equally mysterious images. There's plenty of code-cracking to be done, as Valve is going hog wild with this multi-layered puzzle.

Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum manage [Steam Forums - thanks, Alex!]

Michael McWhertor124535169747104014540059612850914510101214982476576713461374168852788399377770491761651543865547519906925351185350905271011807770092724068901220739080951476436517052800745285913339143142427023024800250986101037899953698516600796056404840278045818760967705242991218410468926675022003114517259122019052033418129586169127351801410332942336052717174674867791949802071611908579321483411159606152173639950417631623208661111621156114635057325203251443473653781919560810686003042370468967086201361635111886641550257145756718854501086492524719579030088150467395604688600235835708676437432707965195535372260569

UPDATE: Welcome BoingBoing readers!

Just came across this article from Newsweek in 1995. It lists all the reasons the internet will fail. My two favorite parts:

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

…

Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

If Newsweek is as good at maintaining the journalism industry as they are at fortune telling, they should be around for a long time.

The Internet? Bah!

Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana

By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Feb 27, 1995

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today’s online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them–one’s a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn’t work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, “Too many connectios, try again later.”

Won’t the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:

Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you’ve got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames–but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I’ll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where–in the holy names of Education and Progress–important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

STOLL is the author of “Silicon Snake Oil–Second Thoughts on the Information Highway” to be published by Doubleday in April.

Filed under: culture, technology

Courtesy of Matt (who else would find this?). Slightly NSFW language

Filed under: humor

Just a few years ago Drupal.org was maintained by a small team of insiders. Now, we are making major changes to the site using the community's many developers and themers.

This update provides the Drupal community our implementation redesign progress, where we've run into challenges, and provide information about our future plans.

The following update provides insight into:

1. Our progress so far
2. The present focus of the implementation and management team
3. Where help is needed from the community

1. A Redesign Progress Report

The Drupal.org redesign is an effort started in 2007 to make Drupal.org meet the needs of the growing Drupal community and showcase the power of the Drupal software. In 2008, an exciting and visionary new design for Drupal.org was completed by Mark Boulton Design and the community.

read more

Amazon1571302046685362152514191255914576477993043268490125670252301672501692927293118207976988016393755935013283201961739744941830535432499551060710894913491305136658

Peavey proudly introduces the new PXD™ Vicious™ Series and the PXD Vicious Devin Townsend Signature Model, a 7-string baritone metal guitar designed to his demanding specifications.

“When Peavey and I decided to collaborate on this project, I knew that I wanted an instrument that could crush everything while maintaining a high level of quality and elegance,” said Townsend, the renowned producer and mastermind of The Devin Townsend Project and Strapping Young Lad. “This quest has redefined how I view the guitar. To have a company that knows how to get things done behind me with a metal axe like this is a real sense of power.”

The PXD Vicious Devin Townsend Signature Model has a 28″ baritone scale, seven strings and a maple neck-through-body design that gives the instrument incredible sustain. A pair of EMG pickups—including a custom EMG 81 7-string humbucker in the bridge position and an EMG 7-string single coil at the neck—give Devin’s Vicious guitar menacing rhythm and lead tones, as well as striking clean tones in the neck position. This gun-metal gray guitar is appointed with locking Sperzel® tuners and an ebony fretboard with jumbo frets.

The Peavey PXD Vicious™ is available in two additional models with a range of feature options, including an adjustable bridge with a string-through design and Coffin Case® hard cases or gig bags. PXD guitars feature high-output Peavey VFL™ active pickups or EMG® 60 and 81 pickups with the EMG Afterburner™ tone circuit, which boosts input gain up to 20 dB for the highest levels of saturation anywhere. See below for full feature options in the Peavey PXD Vicious guitar line.

The Peavey PXD Series is a new breed of extreme electric guitars that captures the aggression and attitude of modern metal players. With supercharged active pickups coupled to menacing slabs of tone-sustaining mahogany, the Peavey PXD Series is the sound of aggression and the perfect complement to the legendary Peavey 6505® Series guitar amplifiers. True to the music that inspired them, PXD Series guitars are built for speed, slicing leads and razor-sharp riffs.

Devin Townsend’s illustrious body of work includes The Devin Townsend Project, Strapping Young Lad, Steve Vai and numerous other projects, as well as production credits for Lamb of God, Bleeding Through, Darkest Hour, A Life Once Lost, and Soilwork. His latest release is “The Devin Townsend Project’s Addicted,” the second in a four-part album series.

Peavey PXD Vicious Series guitars will be available in Q1 2010 from authorized Peavey retailers.

PXD Vicious Devin Townsend Signature Model

Designed with Devin Townsend
7-string baritone instrument with 28″ scale
Maple neck-through-body design for incredible sustain
Alder body wings
Locking Sperzel® tuners
Adjustable bridge with string-through design
EMG® 7-string active neck pickup
EMG® 81 7-string active humbucking bridge pickup
Volume control
Three-way pickup toggle switch
Ebony fretboard with 24 jumbo frets
Glow-in-the-dark side fret markers for dark stages
Gun metal gray finish with black accents
U.S. MSRP $1199.99

PXD Vicious II

6-string guitar with 24.75″ scale and 24 frets
Set mahogany neck and body
EMG® 60 and 81 pickups
Two Volume and one Afterburner controls with 3-way toggle switch
Adjustable bridge with string-through design
Rosewood fretboard
Available in Matte Black, Gloss black, Gloss red, or Gloss white
Matte black model features brushed aluminum finish pickguard
Specially designed Coffin Case® case included
U.S. MSRP $799.99

PXD Vicious I

6-string guitar with 24.75″ scale and 24 frets
Set mahogany neck and body
Two Peavey VFL™ active pickups
Two Volume and one tone controls with 3-way toggle switch
Adjustable bridge with string-through design
Rosewood fretboard
Available in Matte Black, Gloss black, Gloss red, or Gloss white
Matte Black model features brushed aluminum finish pickguard
Specially designed Coffin Case® gig bag included
U.S. MSRP $499.99

We're all hardcore fans of Tetris, here at Gizmodo. Or so I thought, until I played this remake of the classic NES version. It's called First Person Tetris, and it will make you sick.

Or maybe not. It made me sick. A little. In the inside. Now I have a headache, after forcing myself to get up one level. Let's see if you can stomach it. For more than two minutes. [First Person Tetris via Steve Lin via Ángel Jiménez]

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