civilization

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Facebook unveils video chat features

Amazon offers unlimited cloud music storage

Spotify makes official U.S. launch

Civ World comes to Facebook

Mac Blu-ray a possibility now

Motorola Droid 3 launch date

Long before before U-Boats or Red October, the Confederate States of America were fighting bloody battles against the North on foot, on horseback, and with at least one hand-powered submarine. This month, almost 150 years after becoming what the U.S. Navy calls the first submarine in history to successfully attack another vessel--and then promptly and mysteriously sinking to the bottom of Charleston Harbor--one side of the C.S.S. Hunley is finally seeing the light of day again.

The psuedo-steampunk relic was finally found at the bottom of the Atlantic resting on its side at a 45-degree angle about 11 years ago, and it's been in a South Carolina lab, held in the exact same position in slings ever since. Until now. Last week, the Hunley was rotated to an upright position for the first time since Abraham Lincoln was still breathing--how's that for old-school heavy metal? … Read more

As a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age."

But it wasn't until today, nearly two years after taking office, that the president finally began appointing members of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

Obama's first two picks: Jim Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Elisebeth Cook, a former assistant attorney general under President Bush now in private practice at the Freeborn and Peters law firm. The positions are subject to Senate confirmation.

A 2007 law requires Obama to appoint … Read more

Although it has touted privacy as a key concern, the White House isn't faring as well as it should in that area, at least according to a report card from a noted privacy group.

Released last week by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the 2010 privacy report card (PDF) gave the Obama administration a grade of C in consumer privacy, a B in medical privacy, a D in civil liberties, and a B in cybersecurity. Offered by a group of privacy experts at a Capitol Hill briefing, the 2010 report card reflects lower grades in a couple of … Read more

Hearing tales of everyday regular folk skipping work to play a new game happens a couple of times a year, usually around the release dates of a new Madden or Halo installment. Much more rare is seeing same "taking the day off" messages via Twitter or Facebook in reference to a PC game. That's part of what makes the Civilization series so unique; it's a serious turn-based PC strategy game that manages to have similar mainstream crossover appeal as some of the big-console action hits.

What makes Civilization V even more of an anomaly is that … Read more

The past several years have seen a steady drumbeat of negative prognostications for PC gaming, both as a creative medium and as a viable business. High-profile releases were steered to living room consoles, with perfunctory PC ports at best, and messy DRM and hardware incompatibility made many of the remaining PC games more trouble than they were worth.

Magazines such as Computer Gaming World shut down (after an embarrassing sponsored name change to Games for Windows Magazine) and the only bright spot seemed to be the online multiplayer game World of Warcraft--even if other MMO entries found it hard to bottle that lightning twice.

No one was more at the forefront playing Taps for PC gaming than myself, having gone from a cheerleading booster to sober realist in the space of a few short years.

Yet, for the first time in a long time, I find myself much more interested in what's going on the PC side of the video game industry than the console side. My office and home laptops are suddenly buzzing with new and upcoming games, including StarCraft II, Civilization V, and OnLive's various streaming-game offerings--whereas this year's big list of holiday season console releases elicits a shrug at best, filled by the annual installments of mass-market cash cows. How did this potential reversal of fortune take place?

First, the companies that make PC games and the consumers who play them all seemingly decided it was OK to stretch the boundaries and leave their respective comfort zones. The seeds were planted over the past few years as game publishers opened the door to new ways to distribute their wares, losing the most frustrating parts of the DRM equation with services such as Steam and Battle.net (say what you will about online authentication, it works a lot better than discs, especially for those of us who like to install games on multiple PCs).

The next step was online stores like Good Old Games that offer classic games for less than $10, completely DRM-free. It's amazing how much goodwill one can build up by not treating customers like criminals.… Read more

GETTYSBURG, Pa.--If you're a Civil War buff, or even an amateur historian, you no doubt know the history of the battle for Gettysburg. One of the most famous battles of the Civil War, it was also one of the bloodiest. Over three days of intense fighting, Federal troops led by Major General George Gordon Meade fought off Robert E. Lee's Confederate troops, and the battles in and around Gettysburg are often thought to be a turning point in the war.

Each summer, hundreds or thousands of enactors travel here to take part in the annual Gettysburg Civil War Reenactment. … Read more

As a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged (PDF) to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age."

But after 16 months as president, Obama has failed to appoint anyone to a privacy oversight body charged with ensuring Americans' civil liberties are not violated.

Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat who heads the Homeland Security committee, on Thursday called on the administration "to appoint the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which is mandated by the 2004 intelligence reform law, and which has not been filled."

The 2007 law expanding the board's responsibilities … Read more

Archeologists and NASA scientists have "unearthed" a complete ancient Mayan city that employed a system of green urban architecture, the group announced Tuesday.

"The NASA technology aboard the Cessna saw beyond the rain forest and detected thousands of new structures, 11 new causeways, tens of thousands of agricultural terraces and many hidden caves--results beyond anyone's imagination," the group said in a statement.

The project was led by a husband and wife archaeological team from the University of Central Florida who have been in Belize manually excavating the ancient Mayan city of Caracol out from under … Read more