This is amazing - I think it is a must see.

It is VERY well done.

AMAZING CGI Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Renactment

Inc. is a great resource for startup CEOs. Its only $10 for a year, and you can get two for that price if you buy an issue at the newstand and fill out the little gift card.

Subscribe to Inc. for Just $9.97 and get 2 FREE Gifts

IGT and MGM MIRAGE Sign Patent License Agreement; Combined Patents to Be Offered Through Anchor Gaming

RENO, Nev., Dec. 22 -- International Game Technology (NYSE: IGT) announced today that it has finalized an agreement with MGM MIRAGE (NYSE: MGG), whereby IGT will receive an exclusive license for MGM MIRAGE's "Coinless Slot Machine System and Method" patent.

Company Boardroom

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IGT Press Release : IGT and MGM Mirage Sign Patent License Agreement

NIGC Extends Public Comment Period for Proposed Class II Technical Regulations

Washington DC, December 14, 2006 — The National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) announces an extension of the public comment period for proposed Class II technical regulations. Official notice will be published in the Federal Register next week. The comment period will be extended to run through January 31, 2007.

The proposed rule would add a new part to the Commission’s regulations establishing technical standards for Class II games – bingo, lotto, other games similar to bingo, pull tabs, or “instant bingo” – that are played primarily through “electronic, computer, or other technologic aids.” The proposed rule would also establish a process for assuring the integrity of such games and aids before their placement in a Class II tribal gaming operation. No such standards currently exist. The Commission has proposed this action in order to assist tribal gaming regulatory authorities and operators in ensuring the integrity and security of Class II games and gaming revenue.

“The comments received at the Tribal Advisory Committee meeting last week in Washington, DC and follow up comments we have received have given us good reason to extend the comment period for the technical regulations” said NIGC Chairman Phil Hogen. Hogen continued “We believe that our goals of assuring integrity in the industry and protecting tribal assets in a secure technological environment can be met through this set of regulations.”

The comment period for proposed Class II classification standards and Class II definitions will end tomorrow December 15, 2006.

The NIGC is an independent regulatory agency established within the Department of the Interior pursuant to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.

There are many enemies of Tribal gaming. The National Indian Gaming Commission is considering changing regulations that govern Class II games, to make them less profitable. This will have a strongly negative effect on the revenues of many tribes.

Class II is bingo based gaming, or centrally determinant systems. Although the screen of the video slot often looks like a reel slot, the math behind it is based on bingo: a pool of players compete for a common prize pool. Bingo is less strictly regulated than Class III, or reel slots like you might see in Vegas are. Tribes don't have to get permission from the state to run Class II games. They do have to get permission to run Class III games.

The NIGC is trying to make Class II games more bingo like, which means they will play slower and be less attractive to players. This is probably part of a larger campaign by enemies of Tribal gaming in congress, like John McCain, to limit the revenues tribal gaming generates, to increase the government's share of this money, and to limit the growth of Tribal gaming. This is a bad thing.

The economic advantages that Tribal sovereignty has made possible since the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 have helped create a cultural revival among Native Americans. Populations are up for the first time since the European invasion. Tribes are thriving. This is a good thing. And despite the media-inspired stereotype of per capita payments for American Indians, the vast majority of Indian casino revenue goes to provide government services.

Hopefully this extended public comment period will result in the NIGC backing off a bit. They should leave Class II alone.

Class II Technical Regulation Revisions Public Comment Period Extended :: NIGC Press Release

The game's greatest innovation is in unit AI. Units in Company of Heroes actually do intelligent things like scan the terrain, take up sensible firing positions and utilize cover. They'll also spread out when under fire, shoot back when attacked, shift position to maximize self-protection and in general act like squads of veteran soldiers should. Despite this, there's no loss of player control. The incredibly smart soldiers frees up the player to concentrate on the grand strategy of the battle rather than worry if an individual squad is smart enough to make it up the street and take up a position without help.

My brother did the AI behind this game, Company of Heroes, which is now game of the year... and the best part of it is the part he did. So he did best part of the best game of the year.

Go bro, go.

GameSpy's Game of the Year 2006: Company of Heroes

Firebug is an extension for Firefox, but what happens when you need to test your pages in Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari? If you are using console.log() to write to Firebug's console, you'll wind up with JavaScript errors in these other browsers, and that's no fun.

The solution is Firebug Lite, a JavaScript file you can insert into your pages to simulate the Firebug console in browsers that are not named "Firefox".

Wow, now you can sanely debug AJAX in IE and Safari as well as Firefox!

Firebug Lite

If you are wondering who these criminal sex offenders that legislators are jumping up and down to defend you from are, you might look no further than this case:

Accordingly, while I am very sympathetic to Wilson's argument regarding the injustice of sentencing this promising young man with good grades and no criminal history to ten years in prison without parole and a lifetime registration as a sexual offender because he engaged in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old victim only two years his junior, this Court is bound by the Legislature's determination that young persons in Wilson's situation are not entitled to the misdemeanor treatment now accorded to identical behavior under OCGA � 16-6-4 (d) (2).

Yes, thats Georgia. And, God forbid this person might use a website when finally released from prison! Won't somebody please save us from these people!!@

The Volokh Conspiracy - Ten Years in Prison for 17-Year-Old Who Had Consensual Oral Sex with 15-Year-Old:

FRESNO -- Everybody's mad because Eastwood's Iwo Jima movie, Flags of Our Fathers, bombed. I read this one review that said every citizen ought to go pay to sit through it even if it is a bad movie, like it's some kind of patriotic duty for me to put $25 in Clint Eastwood's offshore account. (And yeah, I know movies don't cost $25 but I can't sit down in a darkened room unless I've got a Humpback-size diet coke in one hand, a Maxi-tub popcorn in the other, and a spare clip of Milk Duds in my ammo pocket.)

I've got my own theory about why all these WW II movies went down in flames like Zeros in the Marianas Turkey Shoot: because WW II is way overrated. Next to the guy who directed Pearl Harbor, the men who set that war in motion and made all the decisions from 1939-1945 were the biggest idiots in history. And that's why all the lessons of WW II, everything it's supposed to teach us, is either dead wrong or as obvious as a ballpeen hammer in your face, so obvious that even Barney could teach it to his diaper demographic between commercial breaks.

War Nerd is out there, as usual... but entertaining. Why he got to go and shatter the WW2 myths?

eXile - Issue #253 - War Nerd - Why I Hate WW II - By Gary Brecher

Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, are political sailors -- they tack with the wind, reaching difficult policy objectives through bipartisan maneuvering and pulse-taking. Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example, was deemed a "chameleon on plaid," changing colors regularly to control the zeitgeist of the moment. Other presidents are submariners, refusing to zigzag in rough waters, preferring to go from Point A to Point B with directional certitude. Harry S. Truman and Reagan are exemplars of this modus operandi, and they are the two presidents Bush has tried to emulate.

The problem for Bush is that certitude is only a virtue if the policy enacted is proven correct. Most Americans applaud Truman's dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they achieved the desired effect: Japan surrendered. Reagan's anti-communist zeal -- including increased defense budgets and Star Wars -- is only now perceived as positive because the Soviet Union started to unravel on his watch.

Nobody has accused Bush of flinching. After 9/11, he decided to circumvent the United Nations and declare war on Iraq. The principal pretext was that Baghdad supposedly was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. From the get-go, the Iraq war was a matter of choice. Call it Mr. Bush's War. Like a high-stakes poker player pushing in all his chips on one hand, he bet the credibility of the United States on the notion that Sunnis and Shiites wanted democracy, just like the Poles and the Czechs during the Cold War.

Move Over, Hoover - washingtonpost.com