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Archive for the 'Arizona' Tag

Arizona AG announces $3M settlement with Vonage

November 16th, 2009, 2:43 pm by Jayson Peters
Terry Goddard

Terry Goddard

Vonage must alter its marketing practices, honor consumer cancellation requests and even provide refunds to some customers under a settlement announced today by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard that also involves 31 other state attorneys general.

Customers had complained of difficulty dropping their service due to incentives Vonage offered employees who prevented cancellation, as well as confusion over the cost of the company’s equipment and services.

“We cannot allow companies to ignore their customers’ legal rights. Consumers must be treated with decency and not put off or prevented from canceling their phone service,” Goddard said in the announcement, which you can read in full after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Technology • • • • • • • | Post a Comment »

Favreau saddles up with Downey for ‘Cowboys & Aliens’

September 2nd, 2009, 9:27 am by Jayson Peters

Cowboys and Aliens graphic novel coverAccording to the Hollywood Reporter, Iron Man director Jon Favreau has signed on to direct Robert Downey Jr. in Cowboys & Aliens.

The Wild West E.T. tale, based on a series of graphic novels set in 19th century Arizona, is being penned by Star Trek reboot writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, plus Lost scribe Damon Lindelof.

You can read the entire first issue of the comic here at Drunk Duck, a free webcomic hosting service.

You can also blame this for any delays in other Favreau-Downey projects, like Iron Man 3 and The Avengers. But if C&A turns out to be as much fun as it appears, that will be a fair trade indeed.

Via Wired’s Underwire blog

Posted in: Comics • Movies • Sci-Fi & Fantasy • • • • | Post a Comment »

Gym rats

August 23rd, 2009, 11:14 am by Jayson Peters

Oh dear. Looks like a gym in Tucson is trying to cash in on the Wii Fit craze — the wrong way.

Unless they came up with the name We-Fit all by themselves. Somehow, I don’t think Nintendo is going to ignore this.

Via Kotaku

Posted in: Business • Gaming • Nintendo • • • • • • | Post a Comment »

Free speech? You be the judge — er, clerk …

August 20th, 2009, 10:50 pm by Jayson Peters
O'Connor

O'Connor

Think you have what it takes to be a Supreme Court clerk?

Sandra Day O’Connor says: Bring it, noob.

Supreme Decision, a free computer game for teens created with the help of the former Supreme Court justice and Arizona lawmaker, has launched at www.ourcourts.org. It’s the first of several planned Web-based games designed to get middle-school age students totally amped about the Constitution and the legal system.

Players assume the role of a clerk helping one of the esteemed justices prepare for a tie-breaking vote on a First Amendment case. It’s kind of like when I was in school and our class split into groups to roleplay a similar scenario — except, now the students can do it at individual computers, ignoring each other and preparing for a life of featureless solitude in the cubicle farms of Changzhou.

Via The Associated Press

Posted in: Gaming • Internet • PC • • • • | Post a Comment »

AZ congressional hopeful’s ties to ‘Star Wars,’ gaming

August 14th, 2009, 4:37 pm by Jayson Peters

ward_jimJim Ward, a Republican who wants to challenge Democrat Harry Mitchell next year in Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, recently served as an executive at Lucasfilm and LucasArts.

According to his campaign bio, before leaving LucasArts last year Ward was president of LucasArts and senior vice president of marketing and distribution and online at Lucasfilm, Ltd., where he managed the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

He was part of the Lucas Empire for more than 10 years, and recently oversaw the release of Star Wars Battlefront, LEGO Star Wars and last year’s Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Via Kotaku

Posted in: Business • Gaming • Politics • Scottsdale • Star Wars • • • • • | Post a Comment »

Fire good

August 13th, 2009, 1:01 pm by Jayson Peters

A report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, co-authored by an ASU researcher, reveals that early humans somehow learned the secret of making stone tools sturdier by treating them in fire — 45,000 years before such technology was previously thought to exist.

Image: PhotoSpin

Image: PhotoSpin

Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, described the importance of the discovery in a statement to the media, reported by The Associated Press: “Heat treatment technology begins with a genius moment — someone discovers that heating stone makes it easier to flake.”

The research, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Hyde Family Trust and ASU, was conducted at an archaeological site in South Africa’s Pinnacle Point, overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Posted in: Science • Technology • | Post a Comment »

Rodents declare war on southern Arizona

August 11th, 2009, 2:47 pm by Jayson Peters

Apparently, the Rats of NIMH live in Tucson.

Posted in: Weird • • | Post a Comment »

‘Wired Science’ program features Arizona

November 6th, 2007, 10:35 am by Jayson Peters

The newsmagazine program Wired Science airs 8 p.m. Wednesday Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. on the Valley’s PBS affiliate, KAET-TV (Channel 8). This week’s segment, “Peak Water,” will feature an Arizona issue that should concern all of us. PBS provides this description:

You might be familiar with the phrase “peak oil”—that’s the idea that oil, a finite resource, is running out. But there’s another impending crisis, one that all the Prius drivers in the world can’t stop: “peak water.” Water’s a disappearing commodity too and nowhere more so than in the American southwest. Wired Science visits Arizona and Nevada to see how the driest communities in the country are simultaneously managing a desert population explosion and ever scarce water supplies.

For a preview, head on over to http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/218-peak_water_preview_.html

Posted in: Science • Technology • Television • • | Post a Comment »
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