Pushing the Right Buttons

Now, as Apple tries to reimagine television, it is taking the partnership route again, collaborating with distributors like Time Warner Cable and programmers like the Walt Disney Company on apps that might eliminate the unpleasant parts of TV watching, like bothersome set-top boxes or clunky remote controls.

Apple’s broader strategy — what its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, recently called its “grand vision” for television — remains shrouded in secrecy, as everything Apple-related tends to be. Some analysts continue to predict, as they have for years, that the company will someday come out with a full-blown television set.

Whether or not an iTV ever materializes, the company’s more modest steps, like improving the $100 Apple TV box that 13 million households now have and adding access to cable channels through the box, suggest that its strategy stands in stark contrast to Google’s, which is contemplating an Internet cable service that would compete directly with distributors like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Reports emerged earlier this week that Google has held talks with several channel owners about licensing channels for such a service, but no content deals are within reach.Apple weighed something similar years ago, but its executives concluded that it should work with the industry’s powerful incumbents, rather than against them.

“Apple’s probably going to have greater access to content by deciding to cooperate,” said Natalie Clayton, who oversees digital video research for Frank N. Magid Associates.Case in point, Apple last month turned on HBO and ESPN apps for Apple TV owners, much to the delight of all involved. But those work only for people who have an existing cable or indoor positioning system.

Coming next is an app from Time Warner Cable, allowing some of the company’s 12 million subscribers to watch live and on-demand shows without a separate set-top box. The app will effectively add an Apple layer on top of the TV screen, providing what its proponents say is a programming guide that is far superior to anything offered by Time Warner.

Apple has talked in-depth with other big distributors about similar apps, according to people involved in the talks. Its intent is to collect a fee from distributors in exchange for enhancing their television service and in that way, theoretically, make subscribers more likely to keep paying for cable.“They’re trying to apply their software expertise, their user interface expertise,” one of the people said. (The people, both at distributors and programmers, insisted on anonymity because they said public comments would interfere with the private talks with Apple.)

Apple has sought support from programmers as well. It has proposed, for instance, an ad-skipping technology that would compensate networks for the skipped ads by charging users. While the idea is far-fetched, it intrigued some of the channel owners who were briefed about it and excited Apple followers when it was first reported by the technology writer Jessica Lessin earlier this week.

For Apple, further moves into television could neutralize some of the skepticism about the company’s future since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011. Investor concerns that the company might not have another iPhone- or iPad-level innovation on the way have dragged down its stock price, which topped $700 for the first time last September, but has recently hovered closer to $400.

For the time being, Apple TV is a small part of its business — something best suited to “hobbyists,” as Mr. Cook put it at the D: All Things Digital conference in May. At that time, he hinted at the opportunity Apple saw in the living room, calling traditional TV watching “not an experience that I think many people love” and “too much like 10 or 20 years ago.”

It is easy to see how Apple could help. Products like Apple TV and Roku, which connect TVs to the Internet’s wealth of streaming content, have proliferated because the set-top boxes that cable companies supply have not kept up with shifts in consumer behavior. But the streaming boxes remain a somewhat niche technology.Apple could choose to market its box more heavily, especially as competition heats up from Amazon and other companies. Or it could eliminate the need for any box at all by building its own TV set. Reports this week that Apple may acquire PrimeSense, a maker of motion-sensing technology that could be used to control a TV without a physical remote, prompted a new round of guessing about that.

In Apple’s partnership approach, some see the company placing a multitude of bets, recognizing that television could evolve in any number of ways.Through Apple TV, it is simultaneously supporting established distributors and programmers as well as a parallel universe of streaming TV, as represented by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.

Last month, in a little-noticed move, the company approved an app for Sky News, the British-based cable news channel. Sky could already be streamed live free on the Web, but by creating an app for Apple TV, the channel gained access to the television sets in 13 million homes without the need for complex negotiations with cable companies.

The Sky News app is free, but the software that powers it, from a company called 1 Mainstream, also allows for à la carte subscriptions.Asked about the implications of the app, Rajeev Raman, the chief executive of 1 Mainstream, said: “It’s a learning year for Apple. And it’s a learning year for all of us, to say, O.K., what really does work?”

In effect the app is a more direct route to consumers for Sky News. Bloomberg TV, already available on cable, tried something similar earlier this year by cutting a carriage deal with Aereo, the streaming service backed by Barry Diller. But Aereo is antagonistic toward networks and existing distributors; Apple, at least for now, is positioning itself as a friend.

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When a drone won’t do, you’ll hire a ‘gargoyle’

The dirigibles were easy enough to avoid. Simply stepping out of the way of their ponderous arcs was enough. Clancy had no problem with that.The drones, on the other hand, were trickier. They made noise at least, their eight little rotors whirring and buzzing as they zipped in for close looks here and there. Every now and then one would circle Clancy for a bit.

It didn’t bother him really — they were usually just curious and then got back to their task. Every now and then a drone would get piloted by some obnoxious script kiddie and try to get in his way, and that was annoying.But Clancy had an insanely high personal rep score. As a gargoyle, a contractor paid to gather data on location in the real time Location system, having a high personal rep score brought a number of privileges.

For example, he was coded for free entry to nearly all properties on the market. And not just during open hours; he had access during all empty hours.Empty hours, when the normal occupants were away, was ideal time for gargoyles. Clancy’s sensors were acute, his microcell connection was direct line, and his server farm was robust. Merely passing through a room at normal walking speed was enough to gather all of the normal data a person might want.

Empty hours were also the times when the drones were released. Often in two flavors. The preprogrammed blimp variety lumbered on a preset path up near the ceiling. The drones were “piloted” remotely and could go most anywhere. Software boundaries kept them from colliding with things.

Clancy found the steps down to the infrastructure NID in the basement. His client was overseas. Most of his clients were. Even if they were Americans they were overseas working on something that required in-person meetings. And they often had very specific interests in the technical capabilities of a property before they would make an offer.

His clients had very specific needs so the blimp runs really wouldn’t give them anything they really needed. They also had limited access to technology, or limited time, so bumping around with a drone wasn’t a good use of their time. Finally, they usually lacked specific skills to identify the technology in place anyway.Clancy had skipped college. From his perspective, college was either a great four-year vacation for people who had too much money or — as several of his friends found out — an on-ramp to a contemporary form of indentured servitude.

Instead, he worked with his hands on tech hardware, did some building and printing of his own, and learned what he needed in the digital commons. Along the way he learned to read Korean, the intricacies of hardware interface theory, a great deal of math, and a few things about human nature that you don’t learn at a college keg party.He was, as his grandfather liked to jokingly say, a cyberpunk. But that was an old-world term. The modern name for what he did — watching, moving, collecting data for hire — was gargoyle.

It was a living, and he enjoyed it. Sure as hell beat paying student loans for an outdated degree in software engineering.Once inside the NID, Clancy began making the readings. He’d need to do some of this manually. His client, a finance consultant, was currently in Antwerp, and had limited electronics access. The client did, however, know quite a bit about network interfaces if the data he was seeking was any indicator.

The drone buzzed around his shoulder. Some desk jockey was trying to figure out what Clancy was up to.The annoyance was something he didn’t have to put up with — his high rep score gave him the ability to “shun” a drone, which is basically to set a perimeter of 10 meters between him and all drones.

But Clancy wasn’t going to bother with it. It would be an unnecessary jerk move. Why ding the drone pilot’s rep score because of curiosity? That’s all Clancy had when he started tinkering. He used his 3-D pen to mark out a spot where the drone could hover and see what was going on without getting in his way. The drone locked into it.

Data gathered, Clancy started for the steps and signaled a car. He made another pass through the kitchen to collect secondary assessment data. His client didn’t request it but he knew the guy was married and he figured a little bit of information about the human aspects of the house couldn’t hurt — appliance repair and usage history; agent-based simulations on two people working the kitchen simultaneously; food volume per time unit for big parties — that sort of thing.

The dossier for his client was already zapped across his microcell by the time Clancy crossed the lawn to the waiting car. Air conditioning steamed out of the seating pod into the hot night air.As he traveled back to his studio he began to think about some of the business offers he’d had over the years. Every now and then someone would try to recruit him to do exclusive work. Sometimes they’d even offer reasonable money.

But they never seemed to understand that what made him good at what he did was his freedom to tinker, to learn new things. If he’d signed up to only work real estate, for example, then he never would have learned the things this client had wanted.The day-jobbers were always short on vision as well, it seemed. Along with their exclusive focus they didn’t recognize any external value in what they were doing. They’d want to hire him and then essentially give away his services. It was as if they’d lived an entire life on checklists and scripts.

They wanted his rep score but they didn’t want to do what it took to get that rep score. You couldn’t buy that sort of thing anymore. You couldn’t have done it for the past few years. These guys were dinosaurs.For every gargoyle gig Clancy did, he had a minimum of two customers. The people who wanted to “bring him in on the ground floor” were never putting revenue chains like that together. Tonight’s run, for example, had the Antwerp client to initiate the project. But there were three other data services bidding for access to the night’s work.

Clancy already knew which one would win. In fact, he’d had a suspicion that the bidding process was just a ploy for the winning firm to test the resolve of their competitors.When his contact at the data service had confirmed that the bidding process itself was as valuable to her as the data Clancy gathered he almost fell in love. But she’d gone to college and didn’t come out with debt. And mixing in that world was more complicated than he needed.

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It's Not About the Money

In announcing its final rule concerning the Affordable Care Act's guarantee of free access to birth control for all American women -- including the Catholics and non-Catholics who work in religiously sponsored schools, hospitals and social service agencies -- the Obama administration bent over backwards to accommodate the Church's concerns. The goal was to spare the Church fathers from the anguish of getting their pristine hands dirty by, as the Bishops charged, being forced to sell, buy or broker birth control coverage for women, including students. The final rule allows that either the insurance company used by the institution will have to pay for birth control -- or if the institution is self-insured, the plan administrator will have to provide or arrange payment -- with reimbursement coming through a series of convoluted steps.

In a repeat of the Church battle over the Affordable Care Act, Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, last week publicly approved the administration's final rule, issuing an explanation for the Association's members about how to implement it. Not so, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The week before, its head, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, released his statement expressing dissatisfaction with the compromise, saying that the bishops are subjecting it to further "analysis," feel their "religious freedom" is still under threat, and plan to continue "defending our rights in Congress and in the real time Location system." Count on the 60-plus law suits by Catholic diocese and universities around the country, joined, with the bishops' blessing, by secular employers who also don't like birth control and want to exclude it from their insurance policies, proceeding apace.

It is maddening that the administration had to go to such extremes to placate the Church fathers, who dare to put "moral" and "money" as it applies to this deeply compromised institution in the same sentence. How pure, really, were the hands of the Church fathers who began decades ago to secretly spend millions of dollars in hush money to silence child victims of clergy rape and sodomy, and rid themselves of the evidence of their paternal crimes? Hush money that came from the faithful in the pews, who paid for all those ever-escalating insurance premiums, and from selling the churches and schools out from under those same working-class Catholics? The victims merited all the compensation they got and more, but the Church fathers literally stole that money from the Catholics they served and lied about it.

When the conniving churchmen realized how much money they had to lose by even these secret settlements, hiding the goods from the victims became the next best strategy. So how pure, really, are the hands of Cardinal Dolan, the leading voice claiming the moral high ground in the battle to keep any of the church coffers from supporting birth control for women? Files just released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee turned up a letter showing that when Dolan served as the Archbishop of that diocese, he secretly and successfully, and even as the Archdiocese was preparing to file for bankruptcy, petitioned the Vatican to bury nearly $57 million in a cemetery trust fund in order to protect those assets "from legal claim and liability," aka, child abuse victim compensation. And this was on top of his paying off some priest child sex abusers $20,000 a piece to leave the priesthood, reportedly defended by Dolan in one case as "an act of charity," so that, irony of ironies, the priest "could pay for health insurance."

And how pure, really, are the hands of the Church fathers regarding money when we look at the shenanigans at the Vatican bank? Still laughably named the "Institute for the Works of Religion," the Vatican Bank is literally drowning in mounting accusations of money laundering and mobster connections. Most recently, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, an accountant for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the Vatican's property and investments (and a Vatican account-holder himself), was arrested and charged with conspiring to transfer some $26 million from Switzerland to Italy to dole out to his rich friends.

Given this sad financial state of affairs, how does paying for a health-saving service like birth control for women become such a threat to Church fathers that they've made a major campaign out of it?

The bishops claim this mandate violates church teaching that artificial birth control is "intrinsically evil," despite the fact that nearly 100 percent of Catholics don't believe there is anything "intrinsically evil" about birth control and use it. They claim birth control is the same as abortion; it isn't. They claim to be protecting the institution's "conscience," thereby stepping all over Catholic Church teaching that defines conscience as "the most secret core and sanctuary" of a person, not an institution, and the Church not as the "men of God" but as "the people of God," which would seem to include women. They claim the money at issue is "their" money, when most employees contribute to their health insurance premiums so this is at base a labor issue. And their claim that birth control is not a "health" service, in the face of current scientific knowledge and medical opinion, is tantamount to insisting that the sun revolves around the Earth.

In other words, a woman should not have access to methods of artificial birth control, should be at the mercy of her husband and her biology, because then her husband is more likely to remain committed to her and to God and faithful to the Church's "moral law." Keeping her at constant risk of pregnancy -- and the health jeopardy that is attendant on such risk -- is a small price to pay for maintaining the Church's moral order.

That position -- blindness to women's rights and needs -- has a familiar ring. It is the same refusal to see that underlies the all-male hierarchy's ban on female priests. It is the same refusal that forbids priests to marry. Indeed, at the heart of the contraception debate and so many debates around gender in the Catholic Church is a terror that if women have rights -- over their own reproductive lives, to be priests, to marry priests, to have real voice and power in the Church -- then the Church men will change. And if the Church men change, then the Church will change. And if the Church changes, the future that the all-male hierarchy lives in terror of -- Pope Francis's nightmare of rampaging feminists, waging a "vindictive battle," steamrolling men with their "chauvinism with skirts" -- will, at last, be here.



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Oneida Nation magazine abandoning print

A weekly magazine that is a leading source of Native American news is abandoning print in favor of an online-only presence, in a cost-cutting move that worries some readers who fear they may lose access because of the switch.

This Week From Indian Country Today, a New York City-based publication owned by the Oneida Nation, will become an online newsletter starting with its July 17 issue."In the age we live in, technology is really advanced to a point that we're trying to make sure we're serving what our audience really needs," said Indian Country Today publisher Ray Halbritter. Converting to an online newsletter that is emailed to subscribers will eliminate some of the lag time between when news happens and when it appears in writing, he said.

The magazine, which was started in 1981, provides a mixture of straight news stories and commentary by tribal members, and it is often a way for politicians to get their messages out to Native American communities. President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner have all done interviews or written opinion pieces.

For Native Americans on isolated reservations, access to broadband Internet is anything but guaranteed and print media is a staple of life. According to the Federal Communications Commission, just 43 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives have access to broadband Internet at home, compared to 65 percent of the U.S. population as a whole. Access on reservation and tribal lands is even scarcer, at less than 10 percent, although there are government efforts to expand such access.

Suzanne Sobel, the managing director of Indian Country Today Media Network, said she's not worried about the real time Location system."The reservations that don't have broadband Internet, quite frankly they were also having a hard time getting the magazine too," she said. Sobel said most tribal members on such reservations use their smartphones to get information. She noted that the website had 550,000 unique visitors in June and continues to grow.

Sobel, a former executive with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and creative director Christopher Napolitano, former editor at large for Playboy magazine, are leading Indian Country Today's transition to digital-only. The evolution has been in the works for some time, Sobel said. Halbritter said the change will allow the company to expand its international coverage of indigenous issues and work with more contributors.

He spent most of his career in Motorola's wireless-network equipment division, which was sold to competitor Nokia Siemens Networks in 2010, shortly after he joined the public-safety radio business.Motorola Solutions' main business is supplying a range of public-safety products, from two-way radios for police officers to connected patrol vehicles with video surveillance systems.

That side of the business accounts for roughly two-thirds of the company's revenue, while the rest comes from products for enterprise customers, such as bar code readers or smart tags using radio-frequency identification technology.In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Steinberg talked about trends and competition in the public safety communications industry, as well as Motorola's transformation over the past few years.

Having spent over 20 years at Motorola, I had mixed emotions seeing the company change, though it didn't affect my job much. There were some people who didn't want it to happen. They felt like they were leaving a family because they would no longer be part of Motorola. But nothing is forever. The world changes.

When Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility separated, both companies kept the brand Motorola, and both retained the cross license for all the intellectual property. Other than that, Motorola Mobility is now purely and simply a part of Google.

We spend a lot of time on customer research. We have ethnographers—anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists—who ride in firetrucks, police cars and live a day in the life of a customer. We don't expect a fireman or policeman to tell us what they need, but if you watch them the right way they will show you what they need. We gain a lot of insight from our ethnographers and I think that's why our customers trust us. They know we understand them.

Economies go up and down but typically public-safety communications are prioritized. Even when governments step into the period of austerity, they have to take care of the population. I wouldn't say it's recession-proof, but generally speaking we are relatively strong even during an economic downturn.

Those who hope that arming the opposition will help stem the regime’s current resurgence and compel it to negotiate are making a dangerous assumption. Whatever firepower may be provided to the rebels will be more than matched by the regime’s allies.

SAM missiles may affect the regime’s freedom in the skies, but it has sufficient alternative firepower in terms of its massed artillery and armoured forces to maintain its edge.

Anti-tank weapons are of limited use in what is essentially an urban war. Unless there is truly massive external military intervention (which seems unlikely), the net result of seeking to manipulate the current balance of power will be to prolong rather than curtail the war.

The history of the region shows that almost any outside interference (even on the part of neighbours) tends to end in tears. And the West, despite its long experience in the Middle East, remains profoundly alien to the region’s most deep-rooted forces of religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe and clan, and seemingly incapable of grasping their complexity.

The killing of the FSA commander and a series of other similar recent clashes point to yet another layer of conflict that is only likely to be exacerbated as the war goes on. Arming one side of the opposition will lead to a struggle over access to these weapons and thus a weakening of the anti-Al Assad front, rather than the opposite.

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One isn't just for gamers

The Xbox One is perfect for small business owners and an "entirely justifiable" business expense, Marques Lyons, Microsoft Xbox MVP and the director of Consumer Camp has claimed."What is being positioned as an excellent entertainment device can be just as enticing for you and your small business," claims Lyons in a new blog.

"The Xbox One, priced at $499, is an affordable option for small business owners, as there are many features built into the console that could help it rival even the most modest of video conferencing and networking platforms. "These features include Skype, SkyDrive, Wi-Fi Direct and Internet Explorer.

"One will allow people to not only use Skype on the console, but it will allow for multi-person chatting. Combine this with the wide-angle lens and 1080p view of the included Kinect and you have the means for collaborative meetings and presentations," explains Lyons.

He added: "Currently, on the Xbox 360, you have access to SkyDrive via the Internet Explorer web browser and the dedicated SkyDrive app. SkyDrive has become one of the leading cloud services for storing documents and having them available anywhere you need them. For the real time Location system, SkyDrive, snapped with Skype (for example) can make accessing documents for presentation and discussion easy.

"The SkyDrive app can let you easily access both photos and videos for viewing. If you're hosting a meeting at your office, don't worry about attaching a PC to the TV or using a projector. Store your videos in SkyDrive and then use the app to open that video. Do you have photos from recent travels or images showing details and diagrams? Open them with SkyDrive, navigate them with Kinect voice or hand gestures, be free from tethering that PC around.

"With SkyDrive via Internet Explorer, you can use it with the Office Web Apps to open that Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint. Use the Kinect voice and hand gestures to navigate to websites. Now you're free of clickers and light pens to use your hands to for more expressive gestures."

But it's Wi-Fi Direct, a new wireless technology that allows devices to connect to one another without the need for a wireless access point, which really gets Lyons excited."I'm currently in awe of Wi-Fi Direct and it's possibilities," says Lyons. "For consumers, I put forth the idea, that Wi-Fi Direct, plus SmartGlass, would mean being able to beam live TV to any SmartGlass enabled device. For you -- as the small business owner -- you could imagine having a SmartGlass enabled device and beaming in the other direction: Send your presentation to the TV, use Smartglass to navigate through the PowerPoint presentation, use your tablet to control Internet Explorer. "

With access to the Office Web Apps via Internet Explorer, Lyons says small business men could use the Xbox One as a PC replacement."Because Internet Explorer has access to the Office Web Apps, pair that with a Wi-Fi keyboard and mouse and you have the means to edit documents, when necessary, even if you aren't near your PC.," he explained.

For many years, TV was the leaky life raft for movie stars and directors to avail themselves of when the bloated Titanic of their film careers collided with the iceberg of audience indifference. These days, it's looking more like an escape in the best sense as the film industry, high on the pricey steroids of superhero blockbusters, has grown inhospitable to everything from character actors to character-based dramas. The latest casualty of Hollywood's comic-book obsession? Comic books themselves. This week it was announced that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's literate adventure series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — featuring the exploits of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Mina "Dracula's chewtoy" Harker, Dr. Jekyll, and the Invisible Man in a steampunk vision of Victorian London — was being developed by Fox as a put pilot. This is promising news for two reasons.

One, The League deserved better than the tepid Sean Connery movie that sent its star into early retirement back in 2003; when placed in the right hands, the material is rich enough to support an ongoing series. And two, Fox's move is a welcome and overdue sign that a thinkier tier of comic properties, gobbled up in the wake of Spider-Man's success, might finally fall out of the hands of uninterested, rights-hoarding film studios and into the more creative arms of television networks where they belong.

Grant Morrison's brain, even while sleeping, could power the Hadron Collider. His comic books, whether original creations like Seaguy and The Invisibles or franchise work on X-Men and Batman, are so packed with ideas it's a wonder there's any room for thought balloons. This makes an adaptation particularly tricky — unlike most comic writers, he's not auditioning for movies in his scripts, he's trying to make movies look small in comparison. But I think there's potential in this overlooked three-issue collaboration with ace artist Philip Bond. It's the story of Ali, a mild-mannered Pakistani twentysomething living in a tidy corner of the U.K. where he helps his father run a chain of corner stores. But all naraka breaks loose when, on the day Ali is to meet his arranged bride, a strange crate of Turkish delights opens a portal to a Day-Glo multiverse and all the deities and wonders of Islamic and Hindu myth come pouring out.

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A comprehensive comparison of Dota 2

MOBA games have been around for a long time, but Dota 2 and League of Legends are the first to regularly pull numbers like the 329,977 concurrent users on Dota 2 and the “over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West” League of Legends server.

You’d think that with the sheer popularity of MOBA games, they’d be easy to break into, but that’s usually not the case. Fortunately, this guide is here to help! This article should help you understand the basic concepts that are common to both games as well as the real time Location system.

If you’ve ever played any sort of RTS, then the basic layout of LoL and Dota should be at least somewhat familiar. These are top-down games where you control your champion or hero alongside four other players in five-on-five fantasy action.

Last hitting—delivering the killing blow to a minion—is likely the most fundamental skill you’ll have to learn to play either game. Last-hitting minions is your primary means of accruing gold. Wait until the minion gets low enough for you to kill it with a single attack before you hit it. You’ll still earn a slow trickle of gold over time, but killing a few extra minions can be the difference between buying the item that you need or missing out on XP for nothing.

LoL and Dota 2 do differ in how they reward players for killing players. In both games, killing an enemy player grants gold to everyone who participated in the kill. In League of Legends, the amount of gold a player is worth depends on how many times they’ve died without getting a kill and whether or not they’re on a killing spree. Dota 2 adds to this by punishing the dead player by throwing away some of the unreliable gold that they’ve earned. Reliable gold is awarded for kills while unreliable gold is gained over time and for killing minions.

The distinction between the two types of gold is reason enough to declare that Dota 2 is a far more punishing game. At the same time, getting kills is quite a bit more rewarding than it is in League of Legends because you gain reliable gold while causing an enemy to lose gold. Not only is it easier to make mistakes in Dota 2, but it’s also harder to come back from them.

Every single match of Dota 2 or League begins with the laning phase. This generally lasts from the time that minions spawn to anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes into the game. During this time, carry characters spend their time trying to last hit as well as possible. The goal of laning phase is to earn as much gold as possible while harassing your opponent.

Battles are more frequent and abrupt in Dota 2. Once a team commits to a fight, enemies will be stunned and spells will be unleashed. It usually only takes a second or two for the first casualty in a fight. During a game, it’s not uncommon to see first blood claimed only a few minutes in. Fights in Dota 2 are quite a bit like food fights—you look around to make sure no one’s watching, then let loose a few cups of pudding or an Arcane Bolt or two.

League of Legends is a little less chaotic. The first kill might take place 10 minutes into a match, but that isn’t to say that the game is any slower paced. You’ll be casting your spells far more often than you do in Dota 2 because of LoL’s emphasis on skillshots and low mana costs. Laning is usually a matter of last hitting while throwing out a spell or two to try and push your opponent out of lane.

The later section of both games is reserved for team fighting and coordinated pushes to try and reach the enemy base. As the end of the game approaches, teams usually start to stick together to knock down towers and eventually the base structures—the melee and ranged barracks in Dota 2 and the inhibitors in LoL which strengthens creep waves. Destroying the nexus or ancient is the only way to end the game without forcing a surrender vote.

Champions in League of Legends are more likely to have skillshots and spells that can be spammed. As a result, LoL focuses not only on traditional, attack damage (AD) carries, but also on ability power (AP) carries. Unlike in Dota 2, you can buy items that increase the damage output of your abilities in LoL. The laning phase in League games usually involve quite a bit more ability-based harass. Poking your opponent with a skillshot or target spell is reasonable because of the low mana costs that accompany most spells. Every single champion in this game has four main, character-specific spells along with room for two summoner spells; Flash is one spell that you’ll see all the time because it lets you jump a short distance in the direction of your cursor.

The comparatively lesser emphasis on skillshots doesn’t mean that Dota 2 isn’t a skill-driven game. It makes up for it by having a diverse pool of heroes that are able to build items to satisfy different roles. Dota heroes have much more explosive power with the ability to execute combos that usually leads to battles that last only a few seconds. These powerful spells come at a cost—the mana required to cast these spells is usually high—which prevents them from being used constantly. Another distinguishing factor of Dota 2′s hero pool is the Invoker—playable proof of the wide variety of heroes available in the game. With a total of 14 abilities at his disposal, the Invoker is considered by many to be the most complex character in any MOBA game. Mixing and matching reagents to invoke new spells demonstrates just how versatile and varied Dota 2 heroes can be.

However, those ads will be running alongside a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign orchestrated by the Koch brothers. According to the Think Progress Blog, the conservative group Americans for Prosperity is spending a fortune on television ads aimed at turning Americans against the new healthcare law. The group's first ad is called "Questions," and it features a mother of two who tells viewers that she "has some questions about Obamacare." Her so-called questions imply that under the Affordable Healthcare Act, she will be paying higher premiums and won't be able to select her family's doctor. The ad perpetuates myths that have been clearly debunked. As Think Progress points out, there is nothing in Obamacare that stops patients from choosing their own doctors, and people who get their insurance through their employer likely won't see any changes at all.

And, while the Americans For Prosperity ad refers to higher healthcare premiums, we've seen insurance rates go down in states implementing the law – like California – and millions of Americans will qualify for subsidies to purchase healthcare through insurance exchanges. In fact, it's Republican policies – like refusing to implement the law's Medicaid expansion – not Obamacare – that will leave some people uninsured. The constant misinformation from the Right is exactly why states like Oregon and New Jersey are working so hard to inform the public about the law's new benefits with their new television ads. However, thanks to the Koch brothers, Americans will have a difficult time sorting through the lies, and figuring out the real ways Obamacare will improve their lives.

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Thousands line Arizona roads in procession for 19 fallen firefighters

Firefighters began a 125-mile procession to bring the bodies of 19 colleagues who died in a wildfire a week ago from Phoenix to the mountain community where they lived.Nineteen hearses departed from the medical examiner’s office in Phoenix, rolled past a collection of firefighters outside the Arizona statehouse complex and will pass through the community of Yarnell where the 19 died.

Firefighters and police officers held hands over their hearts or saluted as the motorcycle-led escort slowly drove by and a quartet of bag pipers played a mournful song to a marching cadence. The firefighters’ names were posted on a side window of each hearse.The procession included several firefighting vehicles, including a truck that bore the name of the elite crew to which the 19 firefighters who died on June 30 belonged.

Lon Reiman of Scottsdale carried two small American flags as he waited for the procession to begin. Reiman said he has several relatives who are firefighters and thought of them once he heard the news of the deaths“When you think about their wives, their families and their kids, it just brings tears to your eyes,” Reiman said.

It’s unclear how long the procession will last.Since their fellow firefighters arrived at the scene where they were killed, the fallen firefighters have not been alone, a tradition among those in the profession in the U.S.“Since they were discovered, they have never been out of the presence of a brother firefighter,” said Paul Bourgeois, a Phoenix-area fire chief who is acting as a spokesman in Prescott for the firefighters’ families. “From the time they were taken to the medical examiner in Phoenix, while they’re at the medical examiner’s office, when they are received in a funeral home — there will always be a brother firefighter on site with them until they are interred.

“That’s something people don’t realize. We never leave your side,” he said of the tradition. “It’s a comfort to the survivors, whether they’re families or fellow firefighters.”The firefighters were killed a week ago in the Yarnell Hill fire, sparked by lightning on June 28. Crews were closing in on full containment after the fire destroyed more than 100 homes in Yarnell and burned about 13 square miles. The town remained evacuated.

The crew of Hotshots was working to build a fire line between the blaze and Yarnell when erratic winds suddenly shifted the fire’s real time Location system, causing it to hook around the firefighters and cut off access to a ranch that was to be their safety zone.The highly trained men were in the prime of their lives, and many left behind wives — some pregnant — and small children.

Earlier that week the Sunday Independent reported that Gwede Mantashe inexplicably appeared to be trying to pin the blame for the mayhem in Marikana on a Swede. (That’s what people from Sweden are called. They are ‘Swedes’ and not ‘Swiss’. You follow?). The Swede in question was activist Liv Shange, a Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) and Workers and Socialist Party (Wasp) leader. Mantashe’s assertions that Shange had been trying to destabilise the country by stirring up unrest amongst miners was widely met with ridicule, and read as another bizarre attempt to shift responsibility for South Africa’s very real problems, from the ruling party to mythically demonised foreign forces of evil. Sadly, these two almost laughable incidents will be the sum total of what most South African media followers have heard about the country of Sweden of late. That’s a real pity, because this little-known-about country for South Africans, has a lot more to offer.

Last month I was invited to travel to Stockholm, as part of a group of African representatives for a series of meetings with media regulators, journalists and a journalist union, media producers and the Swedish foreign ministry. Not being able to help myself, the more I learnt about Sweden, the more I began a mental comparative analysis with South Africa – what follows here is just some of that comparison and how we measure up to what is widely regarded as one of the most free, open, transparent and least corrupt of societies on the planet.

What first pricked my interest in Stockholm was something called the Freedom of the Press Act. Despite its name, this piece of legislation safeguards the freedom of expression rights of all citizens, not just the press. More than that, it means that any individual can contact any public authority and request access to any official document without having to provide their motivation for doing so and without having to identify themselves. With regard to the notion of open and free access to information, that sounded too good to be true. So I asked a few questions about how effectively this law works in practice.

Sven Bergman, an investigative journalist, at first lamented the corrupt nature of governments in general, and recounted a few stories of corruption in the Swedish government which had been uncovered by journalists in recent years, the most significant ironically being the sale of military goods to South Africa during the Arms Deal. So, I asked him, what about this Freedom of the Press Act? How well does it work in Sweden? He replied instantly, “It’s very good. Very good”. According to Bergman, the law works in practice precisely in the way that it is put on paper: a journalist can enter a government department at any time, request a particular document and wait while an official collects it and hands it over. The official has to hand it over, and they do. “Sometimes you to have a wait a few hours, but it never really takes longer than that. At some of these places you learn that if you talk nicely to the elderly ladies at the desk, and give them some cakes, then the documents come faster,” says Bergman, smiling.

In South Africa the law that is supposed to enable open access to government information is called the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). But often PAIA fails in implementation, acting as a hindrance to accessing to government information rather than promoting it. The process is burdensome: it requires having to complete a near unfathomable form, and officials at many government bodies do not understand the law themselves, which means that just tracking down the appropriate person to whom one must submit the form, can sometimes be time consuming. Once the PAIA application is submitted, the public body has 30 days in which to respond. Applications are often turned down, in which case one can appeal, but then you have to wait another 30 days to get an answer. So, it’s not a case of, ‘Wait here while I fetch that for you’. By comparison, PAIA is tedious, cumbersome and bureaucratic enough to, contrary to what its name suggests, act more as a discouragement to anyone looking for public information. From a media angle having to wait for 30, sometimes 60 days for information that rightly should be open to the public, when chasing a deadline, is ludicrous and impractical.

But all the legal stuff aside, there’s also the matter of pure principle. It’s the principle of Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act, and the seemingly widely held respect for that principle within that country, that makes it work. What is that principle? It is that information held by PUBLIC institutions belongs to the PUBLIC. To see what I mean, try applying the same principle in South Africa. Imagine strolling into the Department of Public Works back in September 2012, and saying to a secretary that you would like to see the official records of all state funds spent on the president’s private home at Nkandla. Imagine he/she answers, “Sure! No problem. Just wait here while I fetch it for you.”

On Friday, 5 July 2013, the Mail & Guardian reported on a gargantuan pile of documents which they had finally secured from the Department of Public Works detailing some of the behind-the-scenes history to the Nkandla project. Three things are relevant in this case. First, the information released by the Mail & Guardian is damning, to the president as well as a chain of others involved in the project – which just illustrates the value of open access to public information in securing accountability in government. Second, the Mail & Guardian was at pains to point out, more than once, that the more than 12,000 pages worth of documentation which they now have in their possession thanks to a successful PAIA application contains significant gaps of information. The next question is, where is that information? Why wasn’t it handed over to the Mail & Guardian after the PAIA application, which by law, it should have been? Third, the Nkandlagate scandal broke for the first time in a City Press exposé last year in September. Yet, 10 months later, this is the first time a media outlet in South Africa has had access to official information held by a public institution on the matter. The fact that it has taken our public officials so long to release this information, especially with regard to the level of public interest, should have them hanging their heads in shame. (And yes, SABC head-honchos, I use the term ‘Nkandlagate’ deliberately, even though you’d like to have it censored).

The principle that information held by public institutions belongs to the public, were it respected in South Africa, could have saved the Mail & Guardian tons of legal fees and years of slogging through the courts for access to the Zimbabwe election report of 2002. And never mind the newspapers. This principle, were it respected, would have spared countless activists and community organisations around the country from a constant and exhausting struggle with officials to have access to information which should quite rightly be in the public domain for the purpose of improving people’s lives. It would have meant that the Right2Know Campaign could have simply walked into the front office of the Department of State Security and been handed the full list of national key points within a matter of minutes. Instead, Right2Know had to submit a PAIA application (which failed even on appeal) and the campaign then took to the streets in Johannesburg on World Press Freedom day out of protest. But in South Africa, we still don’t know what all of our own national key points are.

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