Hands-On: Beginning My Star Wars: Old Republic Adventure

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Hands-On: Beginning My Star Wars: The Old Republic Adventure

• By Chris Kohler
• 
• June 7, 2011  | 
• 9:00 am  | 
• Categories: PC Gaming

“It begs the question, why aren’t you making Knights of the Old Republic 3?” asks one of the developers of the massively multiplayer Star Wars: The Old Republic.

“We are,” he says. “We’re making KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 on and on.” In other words, upcoming MMO PC title Star Wars: The Old Republic is meant to stand in for all the sequels that BioWare and LucasArts otherwise would have made for their acclaimed Star Wars role-playing games. That’s a tall order, because it means BioWare is attempting to satisfy not only the fans who want to explore sprawling worlds and kill giant monsters, but also those who are looking for a deep, personal storyline — something that MMOs typically don’t deliver.

To that end, BioWare promises that The Old Republic will let you feel like the hero of your own personal Star Wars saga. The game features eight classes — you could choose to learn the ways of The Force as a Jedi knight, for example, or be a military man and concentrate on improving your skills with heavy artillery. BioWare says each of these classes will have “several hundred hours” of storyline.

Moreover, Old Republic will be the first MMO in which each and every line of dialog is fully voiced. That’s several hundred thousand lines of speech.

Publisher Electronic Arts will show two different types of demo for Star Wars: The Old Republic at its E3 booth this week: One in which you can team up with three other players and attempt a high-level boss fight, and one in which you can choose to try the opening missions of the game as a Level 1 character.

Knowing little about the ways of MMOs, I thought it prudent to spend my time at a pre-E3 preview event last month playing the simpler opening scene, taking the part of a hotshot lady trooper tasked with stopping some Separatist forces that had gotten hold of a cache of missiles.

(This turned out to be a good choice — the feeling that I got from the other writers at the event was that jumping feet-first into an MMO as a high-level character was confusing as hell.)

I didn’t have much time to think about whether I was a good guy or a bad guy or what. This all takes place 3,500 years before the movies, so are the Galactic Republic or the Separatists the good guys? Are there good guys? Eh, I’ll just do my job and try to be nice about it. So when my commander starts briefing me on the situation, I try not to mouth off too much, selecting from the dialog wheel the more pleasant options. For now. Maybe this guy will start to annoy me later.

Starting off a game of Old Republic feels similar to rolling a new character in World of Warcraft; you’re kept in a small area and given a few tasks that teach you the basics of the game. In this case, it’s a small military base that the Separatists are guarding; the first thing I end up doing is getting into a battle with a group of three of them. I quickly find out that I have a sweet bazooka sort of attack assigned to the “2″ key, so I hit that every time it recharges and I lob an explosive that takes down these early enemies in a single hit.

This depletes an ammo stock, but I also have a command that will let me stand still and replenish my health and ammo after a few seconds.

My main mission is to find and secure one of the crates of missiles, but as I kill guards, I find that this, too, is a quest; I get some bonus XP if I off 10 of them. So I do. Soon after, I find the missiles and report back to my commander. Now he wants me to go back out there and jam three communications stations, each of which is guarded and each of which is easily disabled by means of standing there while a timer ticks off.

Finally, I get to blow this opening area and head out toward a town, where I will surely find many more quests. A war is raging all around me as I depart, Separatist forces are out in the hills, sniping away at my Galactic brethren.

As I’m walking up the path, I run into another guy with a little speech bubble icon above his head. “A quest!” I think, and talk to him. He wants me to find and kill three of those snipers. I take the quest, and as it turns out I can find them and take them out on my way into town anyway. They’re hiding in bushes and such but not very well. Soon after, with about half an hour of play time under my belt, I reach the first town and quit the game.

As I said, I’m not an MMO person, but I have gone through the first couple hours of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. In one sense, Old Republic felt a lot like that, in the way that it gave me a rapid-fire succession of quests and big XP bonuses to hook me into its carrot-on-a-stick compulsion loop.

The Old Republic’s cinematic approach to storytelling makes for a memorable experience.

The difference is, as BioWare said, in the new Star Wars game’s approach to storytelling. Playing Warcraft and trying to absorb all the story is like trying to read all of Wikipedia. Every time you start and finish a quest, you’re assaulted with giant pages full of tiny text. Old Republic’s cinematic, voiced, more-measured approach to storytelling made for a more memorable experience.

BioWare says if you want to play the entire game solo, pretending that it is just a very large single-player RPG, you can. But the developer’s aim is to tempt over the shut-ins, giving them alluring sidequests and content that can only be accessed with a group of players.

Whether fans will feel that Old Republic is an acceptable substitute for another offline RPG remains to be seen. But from my brief experience, I can see how it might achieve its goal of crafting a more appealing MMO story.

See Also:

• Two Days With Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Kinect Games, Halo 4 Lead Microsoft?s E3 Push
• LucasArts Reveals Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO

Chris Kohler is the founder and editor of Wired.com's Game|Life, and the author of Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life. He will talk your ear off about Japanese curry rice.
Follow @kobunheat and @GameLife on Twitter.

Tags: BioWare, E3 2011, Electronic Arts, LucasArts, Star Wars: The Old Republic

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AP sources: Christie soon to decide on primary run (AP)

TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is reconsidering his decision to stay out of the race for the White House in 2012 and is expected to make a decision soon, according to several people close to the governor with knowledge of his thinking.

Christie has long said he won't run in 2012. But those close to the first-term governor, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, say he is rethinking his hard stance.

A decision will have to come fast. Filing deadlines in primary states are weeks away.

Calls have been intensifying from top GOP donors and party elders for Christie to jump into the race. President Barack Obama's weak approval ratings and a Republican field that has been struggling to put forward a clear front-runner are also creating an opening for Christie.

Christie may think twice about moving forward, however. GOP latecomers have jumped in to see a big initial splash, only to tread water.

Michele Bachmann leapfrogged ahead of Mitt Romney only to be pushed back when Texas Gov. Rick Perry joined the field in August after months of insisting he had no interest. But after two shaky performances at debates, Perry now, too, seems vulnerable to getting picked off.

Unlike Perry, Christie is most at home behind a podium and seems to relish debate — most often with the press corps.

New Jersey's pugnacious governor has been asked about his presidential aspirations practically since taking the oath of office in January 2010. But until this week, he has swatted down the idea repeatedly, consistently and colorfully.

He said he wouldn't run because he wasn't ready, because his wife wouldn't let him and because "I'm not crazy, that's why." A more famous reply came about a year ago when he said that "short of suicide" he wasn't sure what he could say to convince people that he's not running.

But after a whirlwind week campaigning and fundraising in Missouri, Louisiana and California, which included a speech on Tuesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in which the characteristically blunt Christie repeatedly criticized Obama, he started to dial back his denials — he stopped saying he wasn't ready to be president and started referring reporters to previous statements.

When asked about running, Christie urged a capacity audience gathered at the Reagan Library to look at the website Politico, which had pieced together a long string of video clips of him saying he's not a candidate for the White House.

"Those are the answers," he told the crowd.

Christie later said he was flattered by suggestions that he should run in 2012 but said the decision "has to reside inside me."

"And so, my answer to you is just this: I thank you for what you are saying, and I take it in and I'm listening to every word of it and feeling it to," he added.

Later in the week, he dialed up his criticism of the president.

"If you're looking for leadership in America, you're not going to find it in the Oval Office," Christie said at a rally in Louisiana before a fundraiser.

Before the speech at the Reagan library, Christie's brother, Todd, told The Star-Ledger of Newark that there was no change in Christie's decision to run.

"I'm sure that he's not going to run," Todd Christie said. "If he's lying to me, I'll be as stunned as I've ever been in my life."

But after the speech, Christie's inner circle clamped down and Christie didn't make any other public comments about it.

A short primary season could make it tough to organize a campaign in time, but Christie has been making inroads with big money donors and media moguls.

He was the keynote speaker this summer for a retreat held by the billionaire oil tycoon brothers David and Charles Koch. This week he held a fundraiser at the California home of Meg Whitman, the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., who lost last year to Democrat Jerry Brown in the governor's race. Last summer, Christie met with the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes at Ailes' home.

A large part of Christie's hesitation to run has been his family. He has four children, ages 18 to 8. At a Sept. 22 event with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who was also courted but said no to a 2012 bid, Christie said it just wasn't the right time for him.

"It got to be something that you and your family really believes is not only the right thing to do, but I think what you must do at that time in your life both for you and for your country," Christie, 49, said. "And for me, the answer to that is that it isn't."

But he and his wife have been reassured recently that White House life isn't that bad. Months ago, former first lady Barbara Bush made a call to Christie's wife, Mary Pat, to encourage her to think about a presidential campaign, and Nancy Reagan also encouraged Christie when they sat together at the library.

The weeklong trip was a clear success for him, advisers said. It was also long planned. Nancy Reagan sent out an invitation for him to speak at the library this winter, and Christie made a similar fundraising trip last year around election season.

Christie's longtime friend, former law partner and adviser Bill Palatucci traveled to California with the governor and said there was no doubt it was inspiring.

"Many, many well-wishers who know the governor's record and are congratulating him on his record in office," Palatucci said after their stops in St. Louis. "Everyone from hotel staff, airport workers and those who attend the events responding that they know him and like his message."

___

Associated Press writer Michael Blood in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Fear in Colo. town at heart of Listeria outbreak (AP)

HOLLY, Colo. – Eric Jensen surveys his dusty cantaloupe field and seems equally stunned and puzzled at the fate that has befallen his crop: row upon row of melons rotting on the vine.

Jensen is the co-owner of the Colorado farm where health officials say a national listeria outbreak originated, making his withering fields the epicenter of a food scare that has sickened dozens of people from Wyoming to Maryland and caused 16 deaths.

Jensen has no idea how his cantaloupes became infected, and neither do the Food and Drug Administration investigators who have intermittently been in this town of 800 people near the Kansas border since the outbreak started earlier this month.

Regardless of how it happened, the situation has left the town and farm reeling and in fear. Jensen had to quit growing and shipping cantaloupes after the outbreak was discovered — a staggering blow to a region where cantaloupe has always been a proud local tradition.

Until the listeria infections started showing up, Holly's field workers would bring melons into town to share, just as they have for generations. And it wasn't uncommon for Holly residents to stop by Jensen Farms to buy freshly picked cantaloupe. Now, not even the local grocery store has any of the fruit.

No one in Holly has been sickened, but people are frightened by the prospect of contracting listeria. The bacteria can have an incubation period of a month or more, and it principally affects the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

"I ate that cantaloupe, and I gave some of it to my 97-year-old mother,'" said Wanda Watson, co-owner of the Tasty House Cafe. "I'm watching her real close. It's scary because it could be up to two months before you get sick."

Sherri McGarry, a senior adviser in the FDA's Office of Foods, said the agency is looking at the farm's water supply and the possibility that animals wandered into Jensen Farms' fields, among other things, in trying to figure out how the cantaloupes became contaminated. Listeria bacteria grow in moist, muddy conditions and are often carried by animals.

The water supply for farms in the Holly area comes from wells and irrigation ditches that tap the nearby Arkansas River. There's no shortage of thoughts around town about the potential causes.

"Well water? I doubt it. Ditch water? Well, there's some probability, but it's low," said Jim Cline, a retired construction worker. "Animal intrusion? Well, OK, what kind of animal? Deer? Coons? Coyotes? What kind of animal wants to get into a melon field?"

At Jensen Farms, workers have stopped picking cantaloupes because of a recall of its product. There's no need to irrigate the crop anymore, and the melons are drying up in the rock-hard fields. As Eric Jensen surveyed his lost crop, workers ripped up plastic that's laid down in rows to help the cantaloupe grow.

He could not discuss the outbreak, citing a likely raft of pending litigation.

"There are a lot of things I'd like to say right now, but now is not the time," Jensen said.

It's the latest blow to Holly, a town that has seen its share of hard times.

In late 2006, Holly was pummeled by a blizzard that cut off the town from the outside world so badly that helicopters had to drop feed to stranded cattle. Just as people were digging out of the blizzard, a tornado blasted through Holly, killing three people and destroying and damaging dozens of homes.

The Sept. 10 recall of Jensen Farms' cantaloupes came toward the end of a harvesting season made difficult by a severe drought that has rendered swaths of southeast Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma federal disaster areas.

Residents talk about conditions so dry that some corn stalks have no ears of corn on them. Yields in wheat fields — usually between 40 to 50 bushels an acre — have dropped to about 20.

"We just haven't had any luck around here," said Watson.

Holly is about a 90-minute drive from the town of Rocky Ford, home to Colorado's revered cantaloupe growing region. Cantaloupes from the Arkansas River Valley are prized for their sweetness and are such a big deal that farms like Jensen's — 70 miles away — carry the brand name "Rocky Ford Cantaloupe."

The listeria scare has some residents wondering about the future for their Rocky Ford brand of cantaloupe — and cantaloupe farming in Colorado for that matter. They're hopeful this outbreak eventually will fade from the public's memory, like others involving spinach or ground meat contaminated by E. coli bacteria or salmonella.

"You think beef recalls, you think spinach in California," said Michael Daskam, who works in the local soil conservation office. "But heck, I was eating spinach and beef right after."

The same goes for locally grown cantaloupe.

"I'm not afraid of eating cantaloupe. I'd eat one right now," Holly Mayor Viola Welcher said. "We've all eaten it and no one in our area has gotten sick."

___

Online:

CDC on cantaloupe outbreak: http://www.cdc.gov/listeria/index.html

FDA on cantaloupe recall: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/CORENetwork/ucm272372.htm

Calif. man found alive by his children after wreck (AP)

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. – David Lavau's children drove slowly along the perilously curved mountain road, stopping to peer over the treacherous drop-offs and call out for their father, missing for six days.

Then, finally, a faint cry: "Help, help." The voice from the wilderness not only let Lavau's children find him, it may have brought closure to another family and another missing persons case.

Close to a week after his car plunged 200 feet into a ravine, Lavau, 68, was rescued Thursday by his three adult children, who took matters into their own hands after a detective told them his last cellphone signal came from a rugged section of the Angeles National Forest.

And near him they found a body in another car that belonged to an 88-year-old man reported missing 10 days earlier.

As Lavau lay injured in the woods next to his wrecked car, he survived by eating bugs and leaves and drinking creek water, a doctor said.

One of the first things he requested after his rescue: a chocolate malt, his daughter Chardonnay Lavau said on NBC's "Today" show.

Lavau was in serious but stable condition Friday at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital with three rib fractures, a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm and fractures in his back, said emergency room physician Dr. Garrett Sutter. He was expected to be released in three to four days after surgery on his shoulder.

Dr. Ranbir Singh, the hospital's trauma director, said Lavau told him he was driving home about 7 p.m. when he was temporarily blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car. He braked, but failed to gain traction. The car flipped and plunged down the embankment.

It was not clear why Lavau was in the area.

Lavau said he was unsure if he collided with the car. However, a second car containing a male body was found next to Lavau's vehicle.

That car, a Toyota Camry, was identified as belonging to 88-year-old Melvin Gelfand, whose family had reported him missing on Sept. 14, said Los Angeles police Detective Marla Ciuffetelli of the missing persons unit.

The body found in the car could not be visually identified due to decomposition, but Gelfand's son-in-law Will Matlack said the family had been contacted by the coroner's office, which was trying to match fingerprints or dental records to make a positive identification.

"The coroner said it's 99 percent a sure thing," Matlack said.

Lavau spent the night in his wrecked car and crawled out in daylight. He found a stream nearby and ate ants, the doctor said. He also found a flare in the other car and tried to light it, but it was expired. He also couldn't find his cellphone.

Lavau could hear cars and see their lights on the road above and was hopeful he'd be discovered, but as time passed, he grew more uncertain.

"He mentally said goodbye to his family. He wasn't sure anyone would be able to find him," Singh said.

His children told "Today" that after realizing he was missing, they contacted a Los Angeles County sheriff's detective, who was able to narrow Lavau's whereabouts through his most recent cellphone use, text messages and debit card purchases, to the sparsely populated area about 50 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.

The children then organized themselves into a search party.

"We stopped at every ravine and looked over every hill, and then my brother got out of the car and we kept screaming, and the next thing we heard Dad saying, `Help, help,' and there he was," Lisa Lavau said.

Sean Lavau slid down the embankment to reach his father, who was airlifted to the hospital while firefighters helped his children get back up the ravine.

Lisa Lavau told KABC-TV that while her father was stranded, he used the other driver's eyeglasses so that he could see.

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the accident, trying to establish what happened.

It was not clear why Lavau was in the area. He is expected to make a full recovery and was reported in good spirits.

"He was very desirous of a lobster taco," Sutter said.

Matlack said the Gelfand family is grateful to the Lavaus for their search, calling it "a brave and spunky thing to do."

Gelfand simply disappeared, leaving no clues. How he ended up 50 miles north of Los Angeles in his own car remains a mystery, his son-in-law said.

"He didn't show any signs of dementia," Matlack said. "This is the part of the question we'll never know the answer to."

Matlack called on authorities to look at the dangerous stretch of road that claimed his father-in-law's life and endangered another. "How many cars have to go over the edge of that road before somebody has to do anything about it?" he asked.

___

Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer and Christina Hoag contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

Compact Prosumer Cam Travels Well, Shoot Sharp

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June 7, 1975: Before Digital, Before VHS … There Was Betamax

• By Tony Long
• June 7, 2011  | 
• 7:00 am  | 
• Categories: 20th century, Communication, Gadgets

1975: Sony introduces the Betamax video recorder.

Revolutionary for its day, the Betamax format was on its way to becoming the industry standard until the appearance of JVC’s VHS a year later. Betamax was probably a bit sharper and crisper, but VHS offered longer-playing ability, which made it possible to record an entire movie on one three-hour tape. The two formats were locked in a struggle that was eventually won by VHS.

A number of theories as to why VHS emerged victorious have been floated, but the longer playing time was certainly crucial, as was the fact that VHS machines were cheaper and easier to use.

Betamax was also the subject of a lawsuit filed by the entertainment industry (with Disney and Universal taking the point). The industry perceived a financial threat from the consumer’s ability to record TV shows or movies. The court ruled in Sony?s favor, agreeing with the company that a consumer’s right to record programming represented fair use.

Although Betamax continues to enjoy a connoisseur’s niche to this day, DVDs, DVRs and digital downloads have rendered both Betamax and VHS pass�. Sony built its last Betamax recorder in 2002.

Source: Mediacollege.com

Photo: 1) Leonardo Rizzi/Flickr 2) Nesster/Flickr

This article first appeared on Wired.com June 7, 2007.

See Also:

• 1972 VCR Offered ?Analog Rights Management?
• Hacking Your VCR Yields Monster Results
• VCR Converts Your Old Tapes Into Digital Video
• Google TV Growing Pains: Networks Block Web TV Shows
• Jan. 30, 1975: Rubik Applies for Patent on Magic Cube
• March 5, 1975: A Whiff of Homebrew Excites the Valley
• April 4, 1975: Bill Gates, Paul Allen Form a Little Partnership
• July 11, 1975: Unearthing Qin Shi Huang’s Terra-Cotta Army
• July 17, 1975: A U.S.-Soviet Handshake Far Above the Earth
• Oct. 20, 1975: Atari Sits Down on Hi-Way
• June 7, 1968: Legoland Opens in Denmark

Tags: Betamax, copyrights, Disney, DVDs, DVRs, JVC, movies, Sony, television, Universal, VCRs, VHS, videocassette

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Apple’s iCloud: Data in Forefront, Devices in Background

• By John C Abell
• 
• June 6, 2011  | 
• 6:23 pm  | 
• Categories: The Cloud

The long, strange trip that has been Apple’s implementation of cloud computing seems to have finally hit the road Monday with a full-throttled embrace of a paradigm one might not expect from a hardware manufacturer: Your computing life is merely enabled by the devices you own, and should not be defined by them.

The unveiling of iCloud was telegraphed last week, and there were few surprises at the 2011 WorldWide Developers Conference. Cloud computing really just means one thing, and it’s a just a matter of how well you do it. The bottom line is that this is long overdue and utterly essential for the multidevice lifestyle that Apple has done so much to bring about.

It remains to be seen if Apple can deliver. But not trying to solve, in one fell swoop, the growing problem inherent in a distributed digital life might have been a drag on Apple’s core business. A massive mainstream is now the target audience for the mobile internet gadgets upon which Apple has staked its future. A perception that these things are complicated or don’t play nice with each other is toxic.

To be sure, iCloud doesn’t invent a single thing — except a new price point of zero (almost, more on that later) instead of the $100 a year for Apple’s current iteration of cloud storage called MobileMe. Music lovers will be disappointed: iCloud isn’t a repository to stream your music, and doesn’t one-up Music Beta by Google, Amazon Cloud Drive by much. And ? no real surprise here ? it’s only for Apple devices.

But Apple has lots of customers who now own maybe an iPhone and and iPad and a MacBook and have no patience for making any effort to make sure they’re all on the same page. The machine is starting to take a back seat now, by being a dreadfully easy to operate portal that makes your stuff available here and now.

And this is where Apple has the upper hand, why their cloud strategy could be a game changer: Like a tyrannical state, Apple can make decisions unilaterally, and impose them — no pesky cooperation from uneasy partner necessary, no buy-in from competitors, no dependencies.

You may not like the way Apple solves problems or — as in the case of the iCloud — believe that it’s about freaking time. But the sheer scale of this means that, if it’s as good as Apple says it will be, iCloud will refine how we think of computers and spur innovation from competitors in the still-vastly-larger Windows world.

For some the big question was how this would simplify iTunes, which essentially ties your music collection to a single computer. No more: Now your collection lives on a server farm and is available to any of your registered devices ? though not, sadly, as streaming files. And there’s a catch. For that $0 Apple will keep the music you bought from them safe and available to up to 10 devices (up from five). But it won’t do so for the music you didn’t buy from them — that’ll cost you $25 a year. The big innovation with the “matching” enhancement is that you won’t have to upload our collection, which nearly drove my colleague Dave Kravets nuts when he tried out Amazon Cloud Drive. Apple will just plop a another copy on the cloud.

Of course $25 isn’t a lot. But it’s a pretty significant asterisk on the “free” spin Apple will tout. Just about everybody’s collection includes non-iTunes music, so this means that Apple will get $25 from just about everybody who doesn’t want to get into a potentially nightmarish housekeeping problem that cloud computing is supposed to erase.

But, big picture: Apple’s cloud services have been a mess, and overpriced. I’ve subscribed to MobileMe for years, including the $150 family plan for our posse’s three iPhones, three Apple computers and one iPad. And I barely use it: I go to Google for e-mail and calendars, and use DropBox to share files among devices. Now, for 1/6th what people like me have been paying, they will get what sounds like effortless, seamless syncing in the background, and a huge digital hub in the sky.

That is, assuming iCloud isn’t more of the same in the problems department.

“You might ask, why should we believe them, they?re the ones that brought us MobileMe,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs knows the stakes told the WWDC audience. “We learned a lot.”

See Also:

• Apple Snips the Cord on iTunes, Reveals iCloud Strategy
• Steven Levy on the Perils of Cloud Computing
• Why Cloud Computing Still Doesn?t Work and How Google Will Fix it
• Cloud Computing. Available at Amazon.com Today
• Why Apple Might Be Your Best Bet for This ?Cloud Music? Thing

John is the Wired.com's New York Editor and directs coverage of disruptive business and media. He used to be a Reuters hack and a media critic and has always loved juicy quotes.
Follow @johncabell and @epicenterblog on Twitter.

Tags: Apple

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Resource Efficiency: The Sixth Wave of Innovation

• By Olivia Solon
• 
• June 5, 2011  | 
• 4:31 pm  | 
• Categories: Green Tech Biz

The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 heralded the start of a sixth major wave of innovation — that of resource efficiency, according to Dr James Bradfield Moody, author of The Sixth Wave, speaking at the Creative Sydney conference.

The Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev first postulated the major cycles of innovation in 1925. The five initial major economic cycles have been defined as the industrial revolution; the age of steam and railways; the age of steel and electricity; the age of oil, cars and mass production, and the age of information and communication. Each range from 40 to 60 years and consist of alternating periods between high sector growth and periods of slow growth.

Moody predicts that the sixth cycle will be defined by resource efficiency. The new wave is heralded by massive changes in the market, societal institutions and technology that all reinforce each other. These include rising scarcity of ore grades, increase in water demand, and an increasing recognition of the economic value of

‘If you want to succeed you need to find waste and do something with it.’

the environment over and above its potential as a resource and a rise in cleantech. Moody said: “What is the value of a tree? Is it what you get when you sell the wood or the land? Or is it the value of the water it generates of the Co2 it converts into oxygen? We are starting to attach an economic value to all of these things.”

He describes this process as decoupling economic growth from resource consumption. “We are moving from an old mode of operation when we were harvesting resources that were plentiful and cheap to a time when we are managing resources that are scarce and valuable.”

Moody flagged up four rules of thumb for succeeding in this new economy:

Continue reading …

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Olivia Solon is a multimedia journo, blogger and geek with a penchant for animal-themed t-shirts. And News Editor of Wired.co.uk
Follow @olivia_solon on Twitter.

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New Jersey School Scraps Homecoming After Dirty Dancing

PRINCETON, N.J. ? �Princeton High School has scrapped its annual homecoming dance because of dirty dancing and alcohol at last year's event.

The student council has scheduled a movie and a bonfire instead for Saturday night.

The school plans to have its cotillion in January and a prom in the spring.

Student school board representative Arpi Youssoufian tells The Times of Trenton it was just a few out-of-control students who caused problems last year.

So far, it seems the alternative to the dance is well-received. The president of the school's Parent Teacher Organization says 300 students have already signed up.

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Cambridge Engineers Endeavour to Win Aussie Solar Race

• By Chuck Squatriglia
• June 7, 2011  | 
• 7:00 am  | 
• Categories: Cool Cars, EVs and Hybrids

Of all the challenges that come with racing across Australia in a solar car, Alisdair McClymont is most worried about bugs. Not the kind you find in software. The kind you find on the ground.

Australia is full of them, often big and occasionally poisonous. This is not something to be taken lightly if you’re a stranger to the outback, as McClymont and his mates on the Cambridge University Eco Racing team are, so you can see why it might be a concern.

“Being from the U.K., we’re not used to bugs and spiders. Or all the heat,” he says. “The environment is not something we’re used to.”

If watching out for spiders is the worst of the things they’ll face competing in the World Solar Challenge in October, they’ll be fine. The biennial 1,800-mile sprint through the outback is the oldest and most prestigious race of its kind, a test of engineering and endurance that draws dozens of teams from around the world. The Cambridge crew is wrapping up work on Endeavour, version 2.0 of the car that placed 14th in 2009 after being sidelined by a bad battery.

“We had quite a good car, but it wasn’t reliable enough,” McClymont says. “We’ve made a lot of modifications to ensure it is reliable. Our goal is to finish as highly as possible.”

Endeavour in the outback during the 2009 World Solar Challenge.

The team will face intense competition, and the race long been dominated by the defending champions from Tokai University in Japan and the Nuon Solar Team of Delft University, the Dutch team that won the four previous races. The University of Michigan is another powerhouse, having spent more than $1 million on its latest car in a bid to bring the United States its first world title since 1987.

Cambridge University Eco Racing was founded in 2007 by veterans of MIT’s solar-racing team. Its first car, Infinity, drove the length of Britain in a goodwill tour to raise awareness of the esoteric sport of solar racing. That was fun and all, but the goal from the start was to compete in the World Solar Challenge.

To that end, the team set to work on Endeavour, a carbon-fiber sliver of a car with an aluminum frame, lithium-polymer battery and state-of-the-art motor. It was impressive, especially for a first attempt, and McClymont believes it would have done better than 14th if the battery hadn’t started blowing cells.

Rather than start from scratch for this year’s race, the team opted to improve Endeavour. It started by replacing the 5-kilowatt-hour lithium-polymer battery pack with a 4-kilowatt-hour lithium–iron phospate unit. It’s heavier, but cheaper and more robust.

“The battery won’t be a problem this year,” McClymont says.

Using the same car means the team can’t change the layout of the wheels, which are something of an anomaly. Almost everyone runs three wheels because they offer less rolling resistance than four. But most cars have two at the front and one at the rear. The Cambridge team built its car the other way around.

“We thought we could make it more aerodynamically efficient having one wheel at the front,” McClymont says. “We’re not convinced that was the right decision to make. But we don’t think it will make that big a difference.”

The team designed the body using computational fluid dynamics to make the car as slick as possible. The car has a drag coefficient of 0.17, which makes it more aerodynamic than any production car but not quite as slippery as the competition. Top-tier solar racers are in the hyperefficient 0.07-to-0.1 range. Endeavour’s problem isn’t the shape, it’s the surface. The team did all the work by hand, so it’s a bit rough.

“The surface isn’t as smooth as we’d like it,” McClymont says. “Carbon fiber is tricky to work with.”

Still, the team is confident it can improve the drag coefficient by refining the wheel fairings and modifying the canopy.

The car is not quite 6 feet wide and almost 16 feet long. It is covered with 64.5 square feet of silicon solar cells that generate as much as 1.3 kilowatts, although 1 kilowatt is more typical. That’s enough to keep the car cruising at 43 mph all day long. The battery is there to provide extra oomph as needed.

“The amount of power you get from the sun changes quite dramatically throughout the day,” McClymont says. “You’re getting much less power at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, so you need a buffer. That buffer is the battery.”

Endeavour, on the road Down Under in 2009. The team is running essentially the same car in this year's race but has changed the battery and made small modifications to the bodywork.

Typically, teams will start the day with a fully charged battery and end with a depleted one.

“The ideal strategy is to drive all day at constant speed and end up with no battery left,” McClymont says.

The cells and pack send power to a CSIRO hub motor that drives the front wheel. The motor is 98 percent efficient and generates 1.8 kilowatts, or 2.4 horsepower. McClymont says the car, which weighs 485 pounds without the driver, has a top speed of about 75 mph.

Many people roll their eyes at solar-car racing, but the admittedly arcane endeavor has real-world applications. Solar cars are nothing more than highly efficient electric vehicles. The technology involved, from the batteries to the motors to the electronics controlling it all, has direct applications in the automotive sector. That’s why everyone from Ford Motor Co. to Intel works closely with the teams.

“All of these technologies inform the development of electric vehicles and contribute to a more sustainable future,” says Mark Green, technical marketing engineer at Intel, which sponsors the Cambridge University Eco Racing team. Intel provided the computing power needed to run the computational fluid dynamics and other simulations to design the car, and there are Intel Atom processors in the car’s on-board electronics. The interior of a solar car can reach 130 degrees or more, and the cars vibrate like mad because they’ve got minimal suspension, so solar racing is a good test of Intel’s technology, Green says.

Doing well in a solar race demands more than getting in and mashing the accelerator. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and the defending champs finished the 2009 race in 29 hours, 49 minutes at an average speed of 63 mph. There is a tremendous amount of strategy involved, as teams manage their energy and keep an eye on the weather.

It’s also a grueling test of the endurance of the drivers. Each team has at least two drivers who pull four-hour stints. Although vents provide a modicum of cooling air through the vehicle and everyone carries plenty of water, it’s still a tough job.

“You know you’re going to be knackered by the end of the day, but that’s just the price you pay,” McClymont says.

Photos: Cambridge University Eco Racing

See Also:

• U. of Michigan Solar Car Slims Down to Go Down Under
• 2,487.5 MPG Car Wins Shell Eco-Marathon
• U. of Michigan Three-peat at Solar Car Race
• Students Shoot for 2,500 MPG. Seriously
• Japanese Solar Racer Wins Race in the Sun
• Stanford Team Readies Solar Car for Aussie Race

Tags: Auto Racing, Electric Vehicles, Solar, Solar Racing

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Two U.S.-Born Al Qaeda Terrorists Killed in CIA-Directed Drone Strike

AP

CIA-led drone attack kills terror leader Anwar al-Awlaki and Al Qaeda magazine editor Samir Khan in Yemen, in a strike that used two Predator drones and Hellfire missiles.

Senior Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki and another America-born militant were killed�in Yemen early Friday morning by a CIA-led U.S. drone strike, marking the highest-profile takedown of terror leaders since the raid on Usama bin Laden's compound.�

Fox News has learned that two Predator drones hovering above al-Awlaki's convoy fired the Hellfire missiles which killed the terror leader. According to a senior U.S. official, the operation was carried out by Joint Special Operations Command, under the direction of the CIA.

President Obama called the strike a major "milestone" in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.�

"The death of Awlaki is a major blow to Al Qaeda's most active operational affiliate," Obama said Friday. "He took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans ... and he repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda."�

He said the strike is "further proof that Al Qaeda and its affiliates will find no safe haven anywhere in the world."�

Al-Awlaki was a U.S.-born Islamic militant cleric who became a prominent figure with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the network's most active branch. He was involved in several terror plots in the United States in recent years, using his fluent English and Internet savvy to draw recruits to carry out attacks. President Obama signed an order in early 2010 making him the first American to be placed on the "kill or capture" list.�

The Yemeni government and Defense Ministry announced al-Awlaki's death, without giving details. But American sources confirmed the CIA and U.S. military were behind the strike on al-Awlaki, whom one official described as a "big fish."�

The strike hit a vehicle with three or four suspected Al Qaeda members inside, in addition to al-Awlaki. According to a U.S. senior official, the other American militant killed in the strike was Samir Khan, the co-editor of an English-language Al Qaeda web magazine called "Inspire."

Khan, in his 20s, was an American of Pakistani heritage from North Carolina. His magazine promoted attacks against U.S. targets, even running articles on how to put together explosives. In one issue, Khan wrote that he had moved to Yemen and joined Al Qaeda's fighters, pledging to "wage jihad for the rest of our lives."

The strike comes after a heavy presence of U.S. drones was spotted in the skies over the region over the last couple weeks, one source told Fox News.�

The strike underscores the expanding nature of the drone program, which has migrated beyond the borders of Pakistan into Yemen, Somalia and other countries.�

Yemeni security officials and local tribal leaders also said al-Awlaki was killed in an air strike on his convoy that they believed was carried out by the Americans.�

Al-Awlaki would be the most prominent Al Qaeda figure to be killed since bin Laden's death in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in May. In July, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Yemeni-American was a priority target alongside Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's successor as the terror network's leader.

The 40-year-old al-Awlaki had been in the U.S. crosshairs since his killing was approved by President Obama in April 2010 -- making him the first American placed on the CIA "kill or capture" list. At least twice, airstrikes were called in on locations in Yemen where al-Awlaki was suspected of being, but he wasn't harmed. In May, U.S. forces were able to track his truck but were unable to take him out.�

Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, was believed to be key in turning Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen into what American officials have called the most significant and immediate threat to the United States. The branch, led by a Yemeni militant named Nasser al-Wahishi, plotted several failed attacks on U.S. soil -- the botched Christmas 2009 attempt to blow up an American airliner heading to Detroit and a foiled 2010 attempt to send explosives to Chicago.�

A former intelligence official said that with al-Awlaki gone, the branch "still retains a lot of capability."�

But Richard Miniter, author of "Losing bin Laden," told Fox News that al-Awlaki's role will be "hard to replace."�

"He understood American society very well. He understood American idioms and pop culture and how to appeal to Americans," he told Fox News. "It's very hard for them to replicate this."

Known as an eloquent preacher who spread English-language sermons on the Internet calling for "holy war" against the United States, al-Awlaki's role was to inspire and -- it is believed -- even directly recruit militants to carry out attacks.

He was not believed to be a key operational leader, but as a spokesman. His English skills gave him reach among second and third generation Muslims who may not speak Arabic.

Yemeni officials have said al-Awlaki had contacts with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused would-be Christmas plane bomber, who was in Yemen in 2009. They say the believe al-Awlaki met with the 23-year-old Nigerian, along with other Al Qaeda leaders, in Al Qaeda strongholds in the country in the weeks before the failed bombing.

In New York, the Pakistani-American man who pleaded guilty to the May 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt told interrogators he was "inspired" by al-Awlaki after making contact over the Internet.

Al-Awlaki also exchanged up to 20 emails with U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, alleged killer of 13 people in the Nov. 5, 2009, rampage at Fort Hood. Hasan initiated the contacts, drawn by al-Awlaki's Internet sermons, and approached him for religious advice.

Al-Awlaki has said he didn't tell Hasan to carry out the shootings, but he later praised Hasan as a "hero" on his Web site for killing American soldiers who would be heading for Afghanistan or Iraq to fight Muslims. The cleric similarly said Abdulmutallab was his "student" but said he never told him to carry out the airline attack.

In a statement, the Yemeni government said al-Awlaki was "targeted and killed" 5 miles from the town of Khashef in the Province of al-Jawf. The town is located 87 miles east of the capital Sanaa.

The statement says the operation was launched on Friday around 9:55 a.m. It gave no other details.

The Yemeni Defense Ministry also reported the death, without elaborating, in a mobile phone SMS message.

Top U.S. counter terrorism adviser John Brennan says such cooperation with Yemen has improved since the political unrest there. Brennan said the Yemenis have been more willing to share information about the location of Al Qaeda targets, as a way to fight the Yemeni branch challenging them for power. Other U.S. officials say the Yemenis have also allowed the U.S. to fly more armed drone and aircraft missions over its territory than ever previously, trying to use U.S. military power to stay in power.�

Fox News' Catherine Herridge and Mike Levine and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This Oct. 2008 file photo by Muhammad ud-Deen shows Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.

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First lady a not-so-secret 2012 campaign weapon (AP)

WASHINGTON – Election Day is more than a year away, but the 2012 presidential campaign already is well under way for Michelle Obama.

The first lady is promising to put herself into the election effort like never before, and she's asking Democratic activists to do the same.

Since May, the first lady has headlined more than a dozen fundraisers for her husband and Democratic causes. She's raising millions and sketching a portrait of her husband that is drawn with an intimacy that no one else can match.

The first lady is cramming in three more fundraisers on Friday, the last day of the reporting period for quarterly campaign fundraising. She's also blasted out emails to the party faithful, trying to recapture the energy that has waned since her husband's 2008 campaign.