CAN-SPAM?

Our government at its best:

The Federal Trade Commission is joining in the fight against SPAM. So they opened an email address: spam@uce.gov

They want people to forward spam they receive to the FTC as they will put it in their "database". From the FTC,

The FTC’s spam database has served as the basis for FTC cases involving pyramid schemes, money-making chain letters, credit card scams, credit repair scams, bogus weight-loss plans, fraudulent business opportunities, and other scams that were promoted via email.

Great theory, right? Finally, the government does something worthwhile. Well, guess what? The forwarded emails are being returned due to processing error. Wonder if the email is overloaded with SPAM? We'll see what happens.

By the way, Vegas is great.

(Blogger still hasn't fixed the editing buttons. They tell me it is not designed to work with Safari. My answer: Why the hell not? End of rant )

Is this sound sexist to anyone else? According to Kansas City Star (http://www.kansascity.com/595/story/151886-p4.html)

"Japanese women may soon be tapping on the hit Nintendo DS handheld game machine for beauty tips, such as taking extra fluids and monitoring skin tones.
“Dream Skincare” is part of recent efforts by Nintendo Co. to attract newcomers to gaming. Until recently, the gaming crowd has largely been young men fond of shooting and sports games.
But the Nintendo DS — which comes with two screens, including a touch panel — has been a big hit with older people and women with new kinds of games such as brainteasers and virtual pet games.
Players input their daily body temperature and weight by marking a graph that shows up on the touch panel, according to Konami Corp., which made the software.
The “beauty navigation software,” as the company describes it, asks questions that the player answers such as skin tone and smoothness, as well as exposure to sunlight and hours of sleep.
Advice on a daily regimen for healthy skin pops up on the screen, including directions to drink more water, or to eat apples and ginger, food that had a reputation for warming up the body.
Hormonal balance is key for avoiding wrinkles and age spots, and body temperature and weight fluctuations are good indicators for any hormone swings, which can get awry from overwork and stress, according to Konami.
Overseas sales for “Dream Skincare” are undecided. It’s set to go on sale in October in Japan for 4,500 yen ($37)."

Whether sales are successful or not, there are women who play shooting games and sports games. And there are guys interested in having healthy skin. But this probably gets into the larger issue of sexism and video games. Maybe we will tackle it at some point.

America's Army

For some reason, Blogger is only showing two editing icons in the editing bar. But they are "improving" the system again (Whenever I hear that someone is "improving" something and how this will be "so much better for me", I want to dive under a table. Because I know it won't be improved and it won't work out well for me). So no way to change the size of text or block quote or bold. They have keyboard shortcuts listed below, but I am boycotting them. End of rant.

Going to Vegas for the WSOP for a couple of weeks, but I wanted to give a quick note about America's Army (http://www.americasarmy.com/). They are coming out with the game on XBOX 360, according to a number of news outlets.
I don't play it because they discontinued MAC development and only update for PCs.

"The game will feature a multiplayer component for Xbox Live that will include eight maps developed by Red Storm Entertainment. True Soldiers will utilize the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Warfighter 2 game engine." - From Punch Jump (http://news.punchjump.com/article.php?id=4323)

Previous installments of the game (download and online play) are free because it is funded by U.S. tax dollars. Whether the U.S. should be using tax dollars to fund supporting and development of a video game is another issue for another time.

But I wonder if this will be the first truly free game for the XBOX and how will it be distributed.

Memo to America's Army: If you are going to develop a game with tax dollars, then make it accessible to everyone. Not just PC people. Americans use MACs too.