NVinNYC

Can you believe that the CEO of Fannie Mae who salary rose to $13.4 million this year is not getting fired? Instead, his corrupt company is getting bailed out by the Federal Government.

Fannie Mae bailout: Taxing America’s poorest citizens to help the richest:

In Roman times the employees of Fannie Mae would be decimated, i.e., they would draw lots and 90 percent of them would beat the unlucky 10 percent to death with clubs. What would be a modern equivalent? At the very least taxpayers should have the satisfaction of seeing the highest paid 100 Fannie Mae employees fired with two weeks of severance pay (it can’t be that hard to find replacements given that the current staff’s primary achievements have been accounting fraud and then insolvency).

It’s like Patton Oswalt’s ‘Dukes of Hazard’ bit: “Ain’t no way they gonna get away with this one! Skup-dup-dubby-doop-do” (Edit: fixed link here, it’s pretty good stuff so take a listen.)

(Via DF)

Netflix announced yesterday that it is eliminating profiles, a feature that allows subscribers to maintain multiple queues and ratings under one account. This was a great feature for multi-user households to manage a group subscription but ensure that each user was able to have their own preferences, ratings, and queue. To make matters worse, Netflix has been especially hostile towards current profile users stating that:

• All Profiles rental history will be added into the main account rental history
• Your additional Profile Queues will be eliminated. If you would like to keep a copy of each Profile Queue we recommend that you print them out.
• Profiles movie ratings and Profiles Friends connections will no longer be available
• You will not be able to transfer your Profiles data to a separate new account

This seems like a particularly consumer-hostile move from a company that, in the past has had a fairly positive reputation for customer service. As a subscriber and heavy-user of this feature myself, I feel particularly betrayed. The unceremonious termination of my 100+ item queue and 1000+ ratings make it seem like Netflix really doesn’t give a damn about anything but it’s bottom line. As Ars Technica points out, replicating a 4 disc at-a-time account, which costs roughly $24/month, with two 2 disc at-a-time accounts will cost $28/month, or $4/month for Netflix’s bottom line.  Adding insult to injury, Netflix reasons for the change in policy are simply “…to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers,” with no other details provided.  This kind of bullshit PR-speak only serves to aggravate customers like myself who are left wondering how eliminating already-in-place features helps improve the site.

There are, unsurprisingly, many upset Netflix customers pouring onto the web to complain about this.  Some resources and petitions they have thrown together include:

• Get Satisfaction: Netflix to break homes by eliminating profiles
• Digg: Netflix Eliminating Profiles
• Hacking Netflix: Netflix Eliminating Account Profiles
• Protest Netflix’s Cancellation of Profiles Petition
• SaveNetflixProfiles.com
• Netflix Community Blog: Profiles feature going away

Even if you’re not a current Netflix subscriber, you should take note of how Netflix responds to this issue. If you are a current subscriber, I encourage you to visit the websites above, sign petitions, and complain to the company about this blatant disregard for the value of their customers.

Update: they came to their senses and decided to keep them after all.

FUH2.com, home of the official Hummer H2 salute.

A bunch of wonderful pics of people flipping-off Hummers.

(Via Deron Bauman @ Kottke.)

James Duncan Davidson on gourmet cupcakes:

I wandered around SoHo and the Village, ending up at Magnolia Bakery. Of course I got a cupcake. It was indeed good, but I have to say that Portland’s Saint Cupcake has them beat, hands down on the cupcake front.

Fucking cupcake bitches, call me back when they have cup-pies.

I played a Wii for the first time last week, and I’ve been mulling over my reaction and after much though it could really be summed up rather simply:

“Meh.”

I mean, I only played Wii Sports, but I really don’t understand what the big deal is about. I see Wii like computer solitaire: a complete waste of my time. Are people that hard-up for simple games? (Answer: yes, apparently so, because the casual gaming market is in the middle midst of an explosion.)

Yes, the motion controller is kind of cool. Yes, it does bring some new dimension to the games. But no one seems to realize there is a trade-off that comes from this controller. Designing a game around the motion control means you leave the traditional schemes behind, and with that you sacrifice a lot of depth because the Wiimote is not really a precision input device like a button. Sure it makes a great pointer but so does a mouse (plus, a mouse is hundreds of times more sensitive). So you loose a lot of accuracy from the motion control and this means you have to make your game ‘looser’ to compensate.

It’s akin to the difference between playing Halo with your Xbox controller joystick or playing with the mouse a keyboard: when you play with a joystick the game takes this into account and gives you a margin of error (auto-aim). On the flip side, mice are accurate to the point that an auto-aim feature in a shooter would be considered kiddie mode or outright cheating. The difference between the Wiimote and a joystick works on the same level. The game has to make assumptions that you’re doing the right thing as long as you’re close enough even more so than a the joystick. This makes the experience feel sloppy to me and it ruins the whole illusion that “Wow, it’s like I’m really swinging the bat.”

So yeah, I’m done with the Wii at least until they get the next Super Smash Brothers out (which I’ll be playing with a GameCube controller anyway).

Disclaimer: I’m a mouse and keyboard PC gamer (I’m lumping Macs with PCs here). I was raised on the likes of SimCity, Civilization, and WarCraft. My favorite games are mostly hard RPGs (D&D) and real time or turn based strategy games. I like games where there is a lot of tactical decision making, where you have to think a lot, and where you have to work the math and numbers on your units/characters to succeed against your opponent. I’m exactly the wrong type of gamer for the Wii I think.

But honestly, if I really wanted to bowl, I would go bowl. At least then I would feel like my physical actions were having a strong impact on the outcome of the game.