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18 Jun 2011 19:18

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Tech: Duke Nukem Forever PR firm fired after threatening reviewers

  • We are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom. Bad scores are fine. Venom filled reviews… that’s completely different. Too many went too far with their reviews.
  • The Redner Group founder Jim Redner • Tweeting his anger with the negative reviews the long-awaited “Duke Nukem Forever” received upon its release. Those were Redner’s last words as 2K Games’ PR guy — his company was ditched not long after. (Because, um, he suggested doing something that’s very unethical.) The game itself, which many reviewers noted seemed to have come from a different era of gaming, received mixed reviews according to Metacritic — few reaching to the point of total hatred. source

18 Jun 2011 18:04

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Biz: United Airlines dodged a bullet with their system shutdown

  • 10k number of flights canceled after a December snowstorm
  • 9k number of flights canceled after a similar January storm
  • 31 number of flights canceled due to United’s data outage Friday source
  • » That doesn’t seem like many, right? Yeah, you’re right … while there were another 105 delayed flights worldwide, the fact of the matter is, it happened on a Friday night – the best possible time for a total system shutdown. While travelers were understandably angry, it was the difference between thousands of angry people and hundreds of thousands of angry people.

18 Jun 2011 11:17

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U.S.: Report: Hospitals giving out unnecessary double-CT scans

Fun fact about CT scans: They cost lots of money. Also, a chest CT scan has as much radiation as 350 chest X-rays. So why are some hospitals giving them to patients twice? source

18 Jun 2011 10:53

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Music: Lou Reed: Metallica collaboration “a marriage made in heaven”?

  • The record, not yet titled, features 10 songs composed by Reed with significant arrangement contributions by the band that suggest a raging union of his 1973 noir classic, Berlin, and Metallica’s ’86 crusher, Master of Puppets.
  • Rolling Stone writer David Fricke • Describing that bizarre Metallica-Lou Reed album the duo collaborated on. May we just say, could you pick two weirder albums to mash up? But that said, both Metallica and Reed seem uber-excited about the project, which is based around a bunch of songs Reed wrote for a German play. “A marriage made in heaven,” Reed said. “I knew it from the first day we played together: ‘Oh, man, this is perfection, right in front of me.’ ” It might be a bit before the project gets out, as neither Reed nor Metallica (who still are a multi-platinum-selling force) currently have a record deal. But then again, both are legendary enough that they probably have the money to start one. source