Mouse and keyboard on the Xbox 360?

Everyone knows that first-person shooters were meant for the mouse and keyboard -- the mouse to aim and shoot and keyboard to run and perform complicated tasks. That's why I've never liked playing them on consoles. I even hated the much-vaunted Goldeneye.

With that in mind, you can imagine my excitement at the thought of hooking up this adapter to my Xbox 360 and dominating Gears of War.

Alas, it is not to be. As this review, explains, it's great in theory, but just doesn't work that well in real life. Sigh.

Possible contender for my next laptop?

I have my heart set on the nice-but-pricey Lenovo X60 tablet, but this HP tx1000 looks interesting.

I was holding off on the big upgrade until I see what Apple announces in January, but now, I'll have to wait to see the exact price, weight and keyboard size of this HP model.

TabletPCReview has the scoop.

Link

Reporters and Parrots

Google's research director, Peter Norvig, has an issue with journalists.

1. Parroting: The reporter's job is to do research to find the facts. But too often they seem to parrot back whatever is fed to them by press releases, politicians, or other news reports. My friend Joe C. calls this the stenographic approach to reporting.
2. Deception: Public figures lie (Marth Stewart, Kenneth Lay), and reporters do not know who to trust. Reporters lie, either to advance their career (Jayson Blair) or to serve the interests of their corporate sponsors. Sometimes the deception is self-deception: reporters (and others) believe what they want to believe.
3. Innumeracy: Prof. John McCarthy has touted the slogan He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. Perhaps the budding reporters with an ability for arithmetic end up in other fields (like me), but it does seem that reporters repeatedly show they are not capable of simple multiplication and division.
4. Equal Time: Perhaps influenced by the sports pages, reporters tend to see issues as a competition with two sides, which must both be covered. Sometimes this is true, but sometimes one side is right and the other is objectively wrong. Reporters should do enough research to determine who is right and say so. They are too easily manipulated by those who have no facts on their side, but get equal press time anyways just by talking loudly.

Link