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Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Top Stories from the last 24 hours
We the Targets: Obama's Combat Lawyers and a Fairy Tale of Law
February 5th, 2013Top StoryWe the Targets: Obama's Combat Lawyers and a Fairy Tale of LawBy Mobutu Sese Seko
This compensatory fantasy is the only way a Constitutional Law professor like Barack Obama can face his reflection in the camera lens. It's a story of hunches and God-given visions verbally tortured and parsed into "science," like a square hammered into a circle. It's a tale of an American hero spraying Terror Windex on the smudged screen of a threat matrix, mumbling to himself in the ObamaSpeak of Terror Tuesdays and disposition matrices. The part of the fairy tale where one says, "And then a wizard fixed everything," has been replaced with its legal equivalent, the blackwhite Orwellian cant of calibrated pseudoscience, the probity of the imperium and an infinity of reason. The story of how Barack Obama kills Americans ventures both high and low for its rationalizations of untruth, even as its secret—that man is matter—spills across the floor at potentially any point on earth. As Gawker's Taylor Berman noted last night, the memo expands on comments made by Attorney General Eric Holder and by Obama's Counterterorrism Adviser John Brennan. As of yesterday, Brennan was expected to sail through Senate confirmation as the next Director of the CIA, home of American assassination and, now, its own drone force. Brennan originally spoke of an "inherent right to self-defense," while Holder stated that kill orders would be limited to deterrence of the "imminent threat of violent attack." This new memo makes those terms vague to the point of uselessness as law, and to the point of great utility if you merely desire the thinnest veneer of it. The memo's definition of an imminent threat revises the meaning of those words sharply downward, stating,
Now, a terrorist is someone who "recently" participated in threatening "activities"—the parameters of those words are undefined—then failed to noticeably renounce them. The establishment of what is recent, an activity and a threat will be determined by an "informed, high-level" official, with the definitions of that also left blank. Further, the determination of whether to abandon the obligation to capture and try said American citizen—i.e. the clumsy trappings of constitutionally guaranteed due process—hinges on whether it poses "undue risk" to U.S. personnel and "unfeasability." This is a stupid idea that tries very hard not to sound stupid by being translated into the creole dialect of Concerned Legalese and Passive Voice. Even before these recent expanded definitions, listening to Eric Holder try to describe the administration's criteria is simultaneously terrifying and hilarious—a man tiptoeing around the pitfalls of signifying nouns and emphatic verbs as if conscious of what future questions he might be asked in a War Crimes deposition. In language so boldly obfuscatory, you could describe going to the toilet in such a way as to remove all bodily functions. You can instantly imagine Holder going through this process:
And that's how befouling the basic laws of a nation is something people can come to tolerate, even from someone so thoroughly full of shit. This is the kind of language people like Holder and Brennan must employ, because writing the same policy in plain English reveals a patent and fundamental hideousness. For instance:
Policies like that are inimical to simple language not just because they are morally repugnant but because four fine examples of simple language can be found in the Fourth Amendment's enumeration of one's protection from unreasonable seizure; the Fifth' Amendment's guarantees to due process; the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the rights of the accused to public trial; and Article III's enumeration of how we are meant to deal with treason:
Obama tries so hard to couch himself in reason. He and his advisors know that an ugly policy will be more likely tolerated if it seems like everybody put their thinking caps on extra hard when they came up with it. It works even better when the New York Times makes it sound like the people in charge of implementing it will burn their five-o'clock shadow off by rubbing their chins really thoughtfully and going, "Hmmm," after running your name through the reasonably titled Disposition Matrix. Obama and crew are all making that kind of technocrat wunderkinder mistake that if the person who writes the rules is just smart and thoughtful enough, the rules will become ironclad and binding upon all. And the great ugly irony is that they employ this process to pervert and circumvent a Constitution held up reverently in the American consciousness as the most perspicacious binding document ever crafted by—a room full of technocrats. They think they can come up with a fairly calibrated set of rules, then pass them on to the next administration and be sure that whomever occupies the Oval Office will play by them with more faith than they paid to the Bill of Rights. This isn't just an Obama problem: it's a bipartisan problem, and a problem that threatens to become permanent now that Democrats have pardoned this policy to support "their" guy. It's a problem that merits a serious discussion on both sides of the aisle, from leftists worried about overreach in war and the same sort of conservative elements who even now see national assault weapons registries as an existential threat to both liberty and life. But God only knows if we can have that sober discussion. As U.S. Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in response to the ACLU and Times' filing of Freedom of Information Act requests for Justice Department memos on drone strikes on Americans,
McMahon was referring to a set of documents whose details have been carefully leaked by the Obama administration, while that same administration officially denied their existence. They have a strategy for defending and selling something that they have tried to claim isn't even there. And, for a thing that isn't even there, its contents provide the fullest argument for not revealing it. McMahon went on to describe herself as caught in "a veritable Catch-22." The second analogy was much better. In the book from which that expression is taken, the protagonist Yossarian revisits a familiar brothel and finds the old man resident there has been taken away, dead. The place has been destroyed by the boots of the Military Police, and an old woman rocks in a chair in terror, explaining why it happened:
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How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center
February 5th, 2013Top StoryHow to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media CenterBy Whitson Gordon
XBMC 12 Frodo finally brought official PVR support to our favorite media center software, and it integrates very nicely. It still takes a bit of setup to get running though, so we're here to detail all the steps involved for your XBMC media center. If you don't have one yet, check out our guide to building one and setting everything up before continuing. The Advantages (and Disadvantages) of Turning Your Media Center into a PVRFirst things first: putting together a DIY PVR can be useful, but it won't be quite the same as having a TiVo or other commercial DVR in your house. The main advantage of adding PVR functionality to your media center is that you can then do anything you want with your recordings. You can add them to your regular XBMC library, put them on your phone or tablet for watching later, or do anything else you so desire. It can also much cheaper than buying a separate DVR, depending on what you're recording (cable users will probably have to spend more). You can also customize your list of channels, which is nice, so you don't have to see channels you don't like if you don't want to. The disadvantage to setting up a PVR this way is that it just doesn't work as well as a dedicated product. There are a lot of different TV tuners and PVR applications out there, but your experience won't be quite as smooth and seamless as it would be on a dedicated product. For example, on our main test machine, things worked fairly well, but changing channels is noticeably slower than on a regular TV, picture quality can vary a lot (depending on your device and the codecs you use), and you may even experience the occasional freeze or crash. PVR support in XBMC is still very young, so this will definitely improve over time, but it's unlikely you're going to get the same experience you do on a device made for PVR. Overall, I'd say my experience has definitely been a positive one though. I bought a very cheap TV tuner and have been able to watch and record TV right from my home theater PC for much less than any other device, which is pretty awesome, and being able to have everything available from the XBMC interface is pretty great. The more you experiment with different programs and setups, though, the better experience you're going to get, so let's get started. Step One: Install a TV Tuner Card
Step Two: Install Your PVR BackendYou'll need two different pieces of software to run your PVR: a backend and a frontend. In this case, our frontend—the program from which we watch live TV and control our recordings—is going to be XBMC via an add-on. The backend is the program that actually interfaces with your TV tuner, decodes the signal, and does the recording. Some backends come with their own frontends built-in, but allow you to use another frontend instead, like XBMC. You have a lot of choices depending on your operating system, but here are the instructions for two of the easier backends around. Windows Users: NextPVRFor Windows, we recommend NextPVR because it's easy to setup, and comes highly recommended. Here's what you need to do:
That should be everything you need to get started. Head to "Live TV" to try watching TV. If you don't get any picture or sound, you likely need to use a different decoder to get things working well.
This is the more arduous part of the process. Different codecs are going to work well for different people, so you'll have to experiment. A good place to start would be the SAF codec pack for NextPVR, though you can install and try other codecs too (check the NextPVR forums for suggestions based on your equipment). Keep trying different codecs until you find one that gets you the picture quality, smoothness, and sound that you want, and then continue to step three. Linux Users: TvheadendTvheadend is a simple backend for Linux that is very easy to install, and can be managed from a web interface—which means you can manage your recordings from any computer in the house, without even entering XBMC. Here's how to install it on an Ubuntu-based system:
Tvheadend doesn't have its own frontend for watching TV like many backends do, so to test if your setup worked, you'll have to continue to step 3 and try it out in XBMC. All Users: ExperimentWe've picked these two options because they make good choices for beginners due to their easy setup. However, every backend program is different, and there's very little consensus over which is "best" or even the most stable (just search for any two backends on the XBMC forums and you'll find much debate). So, if you don't like the first one you try, download another one and see if it works better for you. It's a long process of trial and error, but the more you experiment, the more likely you are to find something that works for you. Step Three: Set Up XBMC's PVR Add-OnOnce you've ensured your backend is running correctly, it's time to integrate it with XBMC. This step is pretty easy. Make sure you're running the latest version of XBMC (known as 12, or "Frodo"), and then:
You may still have to do some experimentation here to find out the settings that work best for your specific hardware and software, but for the most part, you should be good to go. Try watching or recording a show from XBMC, tweak your episode list from the Live TV settings, and enjoy. Going FurtherThis is a pretty basic setup, but you can do a lot more with your PVR once you get it set up, such as:
Skip and Remove Commercials: You may also want to download a program like Comskip that automatically finds and skips commercials for you. Check out this page on the NextPVR wiki or this page on Tvheadend's wiki for more information on how to set that up. You can even set it up to remove commercials from your video files altogether. Again, this is just the beginning. There are a lot of cool things you can do with your DIY PVR, so once you're all set up, check out the XBMC forums (as well as the forums for your respective backend) for more ideas and support. But for now, kick back with a cold one and enjoy some live TV. You've earned it. Click to view |
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Dead Space 3: The Kotaku Review
February 5th, 2013Top StoryDead Space 3: The Kotaku ReviewBy Tina Amini
Dead Space 3 is boring. Let's rewind a bit. In 2008 we were graced with EA's first Dead Space title. This was a claustrophobic horror game, filled with mystery and an obviously grander, more complex universe than we, as players during that first go, could comprehend. There was clearly more to this infestation of Necromorphs than Isaac could grasp. He only scratched at the surface of what was an increasingly interesting scandal of questionable research, an emerging religion, and a dark power that we had barely any information on. It's all very fascinating and scary. Dead Space introduced me to some of my favorite video game moments, too. Curb stomping corpses is something that is inexplicably pleasurable to me. Jump to 2011 when Visceral and EA released Dead Space 2. The series made a transition that I thoroughly enjoyed. The level where we (Dead Space 2 spoilers) revisited Ishimura is one of my favorite video game levels ever. It was nostalgic, it was disconcerting to see the ship so changed and, heck, I still remember how gorgeous the textures on the hazard tarps draped all over the ship were. There were other memorable moments, too, like the haunting nursery level, flush with neon color and smeared blood in such a sick and complementary way. I remember the adrenaline rushes I used to get when being chased down by the regenerative Necromorphs, sacrificing random items I could've picked up along the way because I was pressed for time and life. New Necromorphs were a welcome addition to a game that maintained its franchise-staple creepiness, leading all the way up to that infamous (more spoilers) eye-drilling scene. The excitement and intrigue of Dead Space 1 and the memorable moments of Dead Space 2 brings us to present day 2013 where the series has officially lost its momentum. The story hangs flat. We're supposed to be reaching some sort of summation in this third chapter of the series, but it's not until the very latter half of the game that we finally get to experience anything remotely close to that. The Church of Unitology has the most meaningless presence until you get to that bridge, at which point you've already sunk in about 7 or so hours into the most formulaic Necromorph fights just to get there. There are a handful of memorable moments in the game—moments where the game affords you some extra power and lets you tear through Necromorphs in a gleeful, satisfying battle where the predictable wave after wave of enemies is finally enjoyable—but they're unfortunately outshined by the monotonous, back-and-forth treks and rehashed maps that compose the rest of the game. Here's the not-so-secret formula to Dead Space 3:
It becomes almost laughable after the first few "NOOOO ISAAAACC COME FIND USSSS" whines from your group members when at this point you are just placing bets as to how long it'll take for the script to cut you off from the group this time. Isaac does so much falling in Dead Space 3 you'd think he'd start using the opportunities to practice diving moves for the next Olympics. Discussions leading up to Dead Space 3's launch did not come without skepticism from its fans. They feared too much action in favor of real horror. Too many jump-scares in place of twisted hallucinations and psychotic events. I held onto hope. I was confident in Visceral's ability to make an enjoyable game. And they are still great game makers. But the direction that Dead Space 3 took felt confused. Like it didn't know what it was anymore. It became this Frankenstein creation of every bullet point needed to make a blockbuster hit, with some half-assed creepiness that ended up only serving as a depressing reminder of the husk that the series has become with this third title.  WHY: Because this isn't how Dead Space should be remembered. Play 1 or 2 instead, and savor the happy (creepy) memories. Dead Space 3 (Solo)Developer: Visceral Games Type of game: Third-person shooter, survival horror What I played: Roughly 20 hours of the entire campaign, some parts co-op most parts singleplayer, including a handful of the side missions. My Two Favorite Things
My Two Least-Favorite Things
Made-to-Order-Back-of-Box-Quotes
Again. I can't believe I'm saying all of this. Maybe fan expectations are to blame. We've been unraveling so many details about the Markers and the origin of the Necromorphs. We've been seeing more of the religious group studying under the Church of Unitology. We've seen what the combination of these things do to people. Where the research has gotten us. Where it hasn't gotten us. It's all very, very fascinating to me. There are so many unanswered questions that Dead Space 3 would answer, I'd tell myself. And Dead Space 3 definitely did reveal information that tied the three stories together, but it was told in the weakest way possible. Playing solo, I experienced maybe two, three hallucinations, something that once gave the series its strength but now only highlights where the game is lacking. The Church of Unitology, though a looming idea throughout the entire game, barely shows up until closer to the latter half of the game. I was impressed by how many lengthy side quests there were, and they added more context to the story overall, but the missions were almost identical and so completely repetitive. It felt like a long chore just to hear a few audio logs. You never feel like you're progressing, just wasting time. That leads me to my favorite thing about Dead Space 3: the text files. The audio logs, too. Reading up on what the engineers and scientists discovered about the Markers, their use, their origins, their connection to the universe and, through all that, the horrors they experienced while discovering all this—that was my favorite part about the game. But the fact that mere text files were the height of my solo Dead Space 3 experience should give you an appropriate frame of reference for how mediocre the entire thing is. Like I said before: this game bored me. There's nothing fun about running back and forth in the same areas, always on a fetch quest. At most on a rescue mission. There's nothing fun about facing the same boss three times over, fighting mostly the same choreographed fight each time, just to have the big, tentacle-y thing crawl its way out of there. Yet again. I don't want to be too harsh on Dead Space 3. It has a redeeming quality. A quality that most dedicated fans hated it for before even getting their hands on it: co-op. Everything that is boring and trite in single player feels pretty enjoyable in co-op. Having a companion lets me excuse the game's faults because I get to enjoy playing a third-person shooter with a friend. I don't think of it as a Dead Space game. This is simply a third-person shooter with enemies that are fairly unique when lined up next to the soldiers of the shooter genre's various worlds. With decent surround sound audio for added atmosphere, adding a heightened sense of panic to the game, because it's so difficult to gauge where the Necromorph gurgles are even coming from. It's a shooter with lots of different guns that you can construct. So when you're playing co-op with a friend your buddy can marvel at how your particular version of the plasma cutter sets your enemies on fire. You can show off your creations. Maybe your friend will introduce you to the power of a cryogenic-blasting shotgun while you let them in on the secret of crowd-controlling saw blades (a personal favorite). The weapon construction in this game is impressively robust.  WHY: Because there aren't that many games with decent co-op campaigns, and it's fun to play with a friend. Dead Space 3 (Co-Op)Developer: Visceral Games Type of game: Third-person shooter, survival horror What I played: Roughly 7 hours of the campaign, completing all the co-op specific missions. Two Things I Loved
My Two Things I Hated
Made-to-Order-Back-of-Box-Quotes
And the guns truly are great. The workbench might be a little cumbersome for newcomers, but it's exciting to see what weapons you can craft, and how you can completely morph and change them. A weapon can start out with a freezing ability but you can swap it for flames. You can have two totally different versions of one weapon, and it's fun to play show and tell with a friend. Dead Space 3 is a better game when you ignore that this is meant to be the third installment of a horror series. It's a better game when you ignore that it's a Dead Space title and just play for the co-op experience. There aren't many games with decent co-op campaigns. There are more games with multiplayer than there are games that allow for co-op campaigning. And for that, I think it's worthwhile to play Dead Space 3 if you're looking for just that kind of experience. While playing with friends, I got the impression that the game was built with the intention of focusing on cooperative play. Besides simple things like a workbench being built for two and the loot system fairly offering the same loot to both parties, the combat itself also felt great to play. It's certainly not as tense with a companion nearby, but it still feels fluid. You can coordinate with your buddy, shouting out enemy positions while you both concentrate on your corner of the room the Necromorphs are invading. Everything that sucked in single player sucked a little less with a friend to share the burden. Puzzles were more interesting to play cooperatively, and even that obnoxious boss was made all the better with a friend flanking from the opposite end. The absolute best reason to play cooperatively over solo Dead Space 3 play, though, is the co-op-specific missions. These missions reveal more about John Carver, your companion. He has a dark history and his place in the game is to come to terms with that. It reveals an interesting character—perhaps the only interesting character in this particular Dead Space title, sorry Isaac—and an interesting relationship between him and Isaac. The game finally feels like Dead Space again when it's taking you down horrific memories long buried, but now unearthing in a violent, cryptic, and beautifully twisted way. Finally, Dead Space is trippy again. Even in co-op, though, the game is still marred by the same issues I had when playing solo. Though the game is immense, it often feels like you're spending a lot of time going nowhere what with all the backtracking you'll do. Wasn't I just here? Didn't I just fight the same exact sequence a mere 30 minutes ago? Yeah, you did. It might've been a reused, slightly reskinned level or just literal walks back and forth. Either way, it's not fun, no. But it's at least less bothersome when you're hanging out killing Necromorphs with a friend. The co-op experience itself is not without its own flaws either. The lack of a jump-in/jump-out feature and a sometimes unreliable checkpoint system that's exacerbated by the fact that if your friend dies, you die, makes the experience a somewhat fidgety one. And I found lots of interesting bugs when playing with a friend, like getting trapped in the ceiling when I just nearly missed the elevator ride because my co-op buddy was too impatient to wait for me to get both feet on the platform (you know who you are). It's still a glaring fault that the third Dead Space title doesn't feel like it has the variety of enemies the first two games had. You face what feels like the same waves of enemies over and over again. This kind of transparency is one of the biggest hindrances to enjoying Dead Space 3 the solitary way. But Necromorph battles aren't the only area of the game that's completely see-through. Even with Carver's addition to the storyline, the entire plot outside of that is simply weak. And who are the rest of the characters you're grouped with? You might remember Ellie from the previous Dead Space title. Even if not, the game makes it clear that there's history there. Now she's shacking up with some other dude, and he seems kind of like a dick. Ok, so there's some personality, some story here. But who are these people really? Why should I care about them? All they do is group together for safety while they send me out to risk my life for some bitch mission. They may as well force me to sit in the tiny middle seat in the back of the space shuttle like a goddamn infant. Click to view The things that seemed exciting in Dead Space 1 and 2—the things that made their debuts in those games—are either missing or stale in Dead Space 3. The same old meaningless jump-scares of Necromorphs bursting out of ventilation shafts and appearing behind you make the game feel predictable. The lack of excitement behind the story makes the game feel sad, and the essence of Dead Space forgotten. The attempt at making you care an ounce about any of the characters you associate with and the poor execution of the storyline makes the game feel eye-rollingly transparent. If you can forget for a moment that you're playing a Dead Space title, you just might enjoy playing what feels like a decent cooperative experience, even if the redundancies are still an issue. Oh, and, I suggest you play on Impossible mode, since the game seems to scale to the easier side from my experience. This probably isn't the Dead Space game you were hoping for. It sure as hell wasn't what I was hoping for. But once I got over my frustrations with the direction the series has taken, and once I grabbed a friend to suffer the long ride of repetitive battles with me, I was able to focus on fighting interesting creatures with amazingly fun weapons. And maybe that's enough.  |
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![<em>The Witcher 3</em> Announced, First Artwork Revealed [Update: More Artwork, Video]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t61Q5MZsIp9bCcEvqLGukPkrTX_ABNIZL3W_Jl_2D-1CSUNK6CQGtHxO6fgyOskFRGcXarzy4f1XENmcIYeGJKmHC1w8-ixRwJmXA3W5fMw6iEWldHwV56tozwCgSd=s0-d "<em>The Witcher 3</em> Announced, First Artwork Revealed [Update: More Artwork, Video]")
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