San Francisco is the new London

They didn’t even wait for actual riots before shutting down communications.

Wizardpc mentioned the other day that the UK is considering shutting down social media sites to prevent riots and the like; “senior officials” also mentioned that they’ve considered shutting down mobile phone masts in riot areas, or deactivating the accounts of “known suspects.”

San Francisco didn’t wait for riots; they shut down cell phone towers (during rush hour!) to stop a protest (an illegal protest, admittedly); they’re damn lucky no one died or was seriously injured because they couldn’t contact emergency services on account of no government-disabled cell service.

What the hell were they thinking?

Underground Shrine (地下神殿)

Record of Lodoss War didn’t start off as the novel series its anime adaptations were based on; those novels were based on actual role-playing sessions the author and some of his friends took part in (using the Sword World RPG system).

The series follows the adventures of Parn (who begins as an unskilled teenager, but eventually becomes a strong knight) and his stereotypical band of adventurers (really; he’s accompanied by a thief, a dwarven warrior, a priest, a mage, and a high elven shaman) as they face off against the forces of Kardis (the goddess of destruction) and the Grey Witch (who has been manipulating the politics of Lodoss Island for generations).

Ryo Mizuno, the original author, eventually spun off a separate series in the same world as Lodoss (Rune Soldier), set on the main continent instead of the cursed island. It’s more tongue in cheek than Record of Lodoss War is, but is still entertaining.

Here’s hoping Sony takes this survey seriously

Because a UMD drive peripheral for the NGP PS Vita would be the best news regarding their new handheld console since we first heard it would be region free.

Ideally such a drive would let you copy the UMD to the PSV’s onboard storage, but even being required to play with a dongle of some sort would be better than all your PSP games only being playable on your PSP (aside from whatever PSN purchases you’ve made).

The PSV is perfectly capable of playing PSP games; Sony has already announced that it will be able to play games downloaded via the PSN; since not all games are available on the PSN, this would kill two birds with one stone: the PSV would be completely backwards compatible, and gamers wouldn’t have to rebuy any games they’d previously bought to play them on the PSV.

Is there anything Bloomberg doesn’t hate?

NYC’s crusade-prone mayor hates salt, guns, trans-fat, people who idle their cars…

And now, coal (via Sebastian).

Sebastian does a better job that I could of laying out why this is ridiculous, especially given the inability for so-called green power generation to provide reliable base power. Read the whole thing.