French fashion designer Ted Lapidus dies at 79

Reuters – French designer Ted Lapidus (R) holds up the Golden thimble awarded to his son Olivier (L) as best designer …

PARIS – Ted Lapidus, the fashion designer who redefined chic with the 1960s unisex look, has died in France. He was 79.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, in an homage to the designer, said Lapidus "democratized French elegance and classicism" and "made fashion accessible to men and women in the street."

Lapidus died of pulmonary problems Monday afternoon at a hospital in Cannes on the Riviera, his sister Rose Torrente-Mett said. He also suffered from leukemia.

Born Edmond Lapidus on June 23, 1929, in Paris, the son of a tailor, Ted Lapidus created his label in 1951, and in 1963 he became a member of the prestigious Paris fashion club that runs haute-couture, La Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.

The sandy-colored safari suit became emblematic of the modernist Lapidus style, with purist lines that swept the international fashion scene in the 1960s and 1970s. At one point, he was referred to as "the poet of French couture," the statement by Sarkozy's office noted.

However, Ted Lapidus designed high fashion for only a brief portion of his career, preferring to put the accent on accessories early on. Today, the Ted Lapidus label lives mainly through the sale of accessories such as fragrances and watches.

Olivier Lapidus, the designer's son, continued diversifying the label through new partnerships starting in 1982.

Funeral services were scheduled for Friday at Paris' Pere-Lachaise cemetery.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com

Fashion designer Ted Lapidus dies at age 79

AFP/File – A model displaying a creation by fashion designer Ted Lapidus in 1975, Lapidus, whose career soared in …

PARIS (AFP) – Fashion designer Ted Lapidus, whose career soared in the 1960s and 1970s with the unisex and safari look, died Monday at age 70 in a hospital in Cannes on the French Rivera, his family said.

"He died at 2:30 pm. He had suffered for several years from leukemia and died of respiratory failure," sais Rose Torrente-Mett, his sister, also a designer.

Lapidus will be buried on Friday at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081229/en_afp/lifestylefashionlapidusobit;_ylt=Avu9.kSq8nMpmdvoqdkFKupPWrsF

Intern Kanye? Say What?!

E! Online – Intern Kanye? Say What?!(E! Online)

Los Angeles (E! Online) – Once again, it seems like the "K" in U.K. stands for kooky. While there may be a sliver of truth to the idea that Kanye West wants to get some hands-on experience in the fashion biz with a London position at Louis Vuitton or some other fashion house, we've got a problem with this quote, supposedly from Kanye, in the U.K.'s Mirror:

"I'm going to go and take an internship and just do something that's like completely normal, and just rap at the weekends or something."

Note to technicians working in the U.K. quote-fabricating industry: Americans don't do anything "at the weekends"; we do stuff "on the weekend." Also, since Kanye says and does enough crazy things for real, there's no need to make shizz up.

··· THEY SAID WHAT? Get today's most commented stories now at www.eonline.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com

The games of 2008

The games of 2008
Part of Keen's adventure in Action/Adventure, Age of Conan, Console, FPS/Shooter, MMORPG, Nintendo, PS3, PotBS, RPG, RTS, Random things, WAR, WoW, Xbox360

Happy New Year everyone! Another year of gaming has come and gone and I want to take the opportunity to reflect upon the past year. Unlike some years, 2008 was actually full of gaming for me and with that gaming came the usual fun but it also tought me many lessons. What I'm going to do now is go through each of the gaming genres and possibly platforms to give you guys a quick rundown of what I enjoyed most, hated most, never got to see, and learned while playing games in 2008.

RTS
Overall, I was pretty disappointed with what we saw from this pocket of gaming. The only game really worth mentioning is Sins of a Solar Empire. SoaSE received a lot of praise for being so different from most games and doing so without the backing of a huge publisher. I just couldn't get into it and sadly this meant that the only other RTS games in 2008 worth checking out were... well, Red Alert 3, and that didn't pan out at all like I was hoping. I expected RA3 to be huge for me but it ended up slipping away into the shadows after I wasn't impressed by the demo. Overall, the genre hid itself in 2008 but from the looks of it we may see it resurface as king in 2009 with the release of StarCraft 2.

FPS / other Shooters
The FPS/shooter genre was about to take the same dive as the RTS games on the PC before November when Left 4 Dead released. Until this point we had no shooters on the PC release that were even worth except for Call of Duty World at War, but the jury is still out on CoD5 for me on whether or not it'll be considered a personal hit. L4D introduced an entirely new style of play for FPS games with multiplayer storytelling and cooperative play rising to new levels. But again, until November all we had to go on were the amazing releases of 2007 (CoD4 and TF2) which are still trumping the success of 2008's releases. 2009 may bring with it a few interesting announcement and possibly a release, but I don't expect much given the direction that some of these publishers are taking their titles. I'm holding out hope that Battlefield 3 revives it for me.

RPG
Err... what RPG's? For me, this genre tanked worse than RTS games. This is, of course, my personal opinion [Duh, my blog] so I'll probably receive some nasty emails or flames but... what do we have to work with here? Fallout 3, Fable 2, a couple ports to PC from consoles, and a few "enhanced editions" of games that didn't do so well? I don't find Fallout 3 very interesting at all from a RPG perspective and Fable 2 was once again not what I expected from the Fable series. I'll go ahead and brush the rest away for being 2007 or failed titles and conclude that this genre needs some serious help on PC and higher standards for consoles. I want to see the true RPG style return to PC in the coming years with 2009 - hopefully - bringing an announcement.

MMORPGs
Since there are only a couple games in this genre for 2008, I'll go down the list of the ones I played - the ones worth mentioning - (just so happens I played them all) and give you my quick thoughts.

Pirates of the Burning Sea - Over instancing your world is bad folks. This little engine that almost could really had my hopes high. I was ready for a Pirate mmo; especially one that allowed me to command my own ship on the seas. At heart, it tried. It had a lot of neat ideas and the world was its oyster. In the end, the direction that FLS went was the wrong one but I hope it opened the doors for future Pirate'ish MMORPGs to release and learn from the unfortunate mistakes made here. I'm still adamant that when a Pirate MMO releases which allows players to command a ship together and truly sail a real virtual world while offering the plethora of possibilities of Nation combat and other PvP/PvE will be a success.

Age of Conan - Everyone learned a lesson here: graphics do not make the game. Releasing a game without the content to support a poorly designed game on top of having some of the worst performance ever seen in the genre is the recipe for disaster. I also learned that I do not want developers being innovative for the sake of being innovative. Hungry Hungry Hippos [Google it] combat is no substitution for what works. I walked away burned by AoC but I learned a lot about trusting my gut instinct. I also learned that more people read my blog that I thought. The emails, comments, in-game /tells in various games, and other communicae telling me how people wish they listened to me about AoC reinforce that I really need to listen to my gut when it comes to games and especially when writing about them.

Warhammer Online - It's been a rollercoaster, that's for sure. The game had a pretty rocky launch because it was released a couple months before it should have been. What Mythic needed to do was release the game in the state it's in with 1.1 and not what it was at launch. The result has been losing a pretty good chunk of players in the first few months. However, the game is in an amazing place right now. Aside from a few bugs and design issues that need to be ironed out, this is by far the best MMORPG for the player who enjoys large-scale team based PvP (RvR). It lacks the PvE polish and it has a few issues with incentives and player-driven content but it's getting there and when it does finally get there it will blow people away. For the past month I took a small break from the game and only played it on and off while I tried out other games. My reason for doing so was "I don't think I'll miss the game if I stop playing". Turns out, when I stopped playing for a while all I could do was think about how "I really want to play WAR". That's a really good sign.

World of Warcraft - Ohhh boy. Yep, I resubbed to WoW a couple weeks after WotLK launched. I wanted to see what had changed because I was being told by so many friends that the game had changed significantly. True, it had changed a lot. The game is no longer about 40-man raids and only a battleground rank grind. Instead, it's about 10-man and 25-man raids where the 25-man raids will always have a significant advantage over the 10-man. Instead of just a battleground rank grind it's about a point grind for arenas and battlegrounds. It's all about getting to that quota each week instead of enjoying what you're actually doing. The treadmill is moving faster than ever in World of Warcraft and although the game's polish is truly second to none, it fails to be about the fun. The "game" ends at the max level abruptly. The leveling process deserves so much praise but that's the end of the game. At 80 the meta game begins where points take over for fun. 11.5 million people are not playing a "game". So no, it has not changed at heart - it's just added a new layer of blinding polish. I have not canceled yet but I'm moving in that direction. [More on this later this week.]

Source: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-01-02/20090102065001641,1.shtml

Zune 'bug' fixed, says Microsoft

The glitch hit the oldest Zune music players.

The glitch that froze many older Zune music players should now have been cleared, says Microsoft.

Many owners of 30GB Zune players found that the gadget froze up on the last day of 2008, thanks to a problem with software on the device.

But, said Microsoft, players should function properly once fully charged and switched on again on 1 January.

However, some Zune owners were still reporting lingering problems with their portable player.

Disgruntled owners filled Microsoft's support forums with complaints on 31 December, searching for a solution to the problem with their player.

The glitch revolves around the fact that 2008 was a leap year and had an extra day for which software on the Zune was not prepared.

This should have been corrected on 1 January when the gadget's software consults the internal clock and gets past the missing day.

By charging the device and turning it on 1 January owners should be able to get the gadget back to normal, said Microsoft spokesman Brian Eskridge.

"It worked for me and it seems like it's working for customers," Mr Eskridge told the AP newswire. "From the limited time I've looked on the forums, it seems customers have had good success with it."

The few customers who were still reporting problems were being urged by others to let the gadget recharge fully before trying to turn it on again and see if it had been fully restored.

The glitch only hit 30GB Zune players which were the first model to be released in mid-November, 2006. Later models are unaffected.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7807797.stm

Mars rovers roll on to five years

The rovers keep on rolling across the dusty surface

The US space agency's (Nasa) Mars rovers are celebrating a remarkable five years on the Red Planet.

The first robot, named Spirit, landed on 3 January, 2004, followed by its twin, Opportunity, 21 days later.

It was hoped the robots would work for at least three months; but their longevity in the freezing Martian conditions has surprised everyone.

The rovers' data has revealed much about the history of water at Mars' equator billions of years ago.

"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at Nasa's Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead."

Spirit is exploring a 150km-wide bowl-shaped depression known as Gusev Crater. It has found an abundance of rocks and soils bearing evidence of extensive exposure to water.

Opportunity is on the other side of the planet, in a flat region known as Meridiani Planum.

Some of the rocks seen by Opportunity were once "drenched" in water

Its data has shown conclusively that Mars sustained liquid water on its surface. The sedimentary rocks at its study location were laid down under gently flowing surface water.

The rovers are now showing some serious signs of wear and tear.

Spirit has to drive backwards everywhere it goes because of a jammed wheel; and Opportunity's robotic arm has a glitch in a shoulder joint because of a broken electrical wire.

There have been times also when the vehicles' have been dangerously short on power because of the dust covering on their solar panels.

The vehicles continue to return breathtaking panoramas

When Spirit and Opportunity do eventually fail, Nasa will have to wait awhile for its next surface mission.

It recently delayed this year's planned launch to 2011 of a much more capable vehicle, known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The rover project has been beset by technical and budgetary problems.

The decision was taken not long after Europe also put back its rover venture known as ExoMars. Officials cited cost concerns.

It is likely all surface missions in future for Nasa and the European Space Agency will be joint affairs because of the high cost of getting spacecraft down on to the planet.

Nasa lost contact with its static Phoenix lander in November. It was operating in much more difficult conditions at a high-latitude location.

The rovers succeeded where some other missions failed

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7808917.stm