Page June 19, 19, 2013 2013 Page 22 — — THE The PORTLAND PORTLAND DAILY Daily SUN, Sun, Wednesday, Wednesday, June
Hunting for ‘E.T.’ game
ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (NY Times) — You are the world’s greatest video game maker, but suddenly you find yourself stuck with millions of cartridges of a game nobody wants. What do you do? The New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. City officials say they welcome the attention to their landfill. You load the cartridges into trucks and bury them in the New Mexico desert. Atari did just that almost 30 years ago, or so the story goes. The truth lies beneath packed dirt and poured concrete in a sleeping landfill by the railroad tracks behind a McDonald’s here, where this city of about 32,000, home to an Air Force base and the state’s Museum of Space History, dumped its garbage many years ago. A spray-painted sign, bright orange against a white background, warns visitors: “Keep Out.” The place may be the final resting place for the video game E.T., recalled by some as one of the worst video games ever made. Snopes.com, the Web authority on rumors, hoaxes and urban myths, ruled the burial of the E.T. cartridges a legend, though there are enough stories circulating online to cast doubt and feed the mystery. Here — in plastic cases, shoe boxes and tattered paper bags stored in closets and garages — there is enough proof to be found that at least some E.T. games were buried in the landfill. “It’s not a myth,” Mark Esquero, 69, said in his living room one recent afternoon, brandishing a cartridge of E.T., one of more than a dozen games he scooped from a deep hole in the landfill the night after Atari dumped its loot. The event has captured the imagination of the original joystick generation, to whom the video game experience was grounded on the enchanting possibilities of rudimentary graphic designs. (Think of characters built with Lego bricks; no curved lines.) It has inspired music videos and an independent film based on the Web television series “The Angry Video Game Nerd,” whose main character, traumatized by the E.T. game, sets out to debunk the legend of the landfill, hoping to save young generations of gamers from the trauma of playing it. “Everybody’s always fantasized about digging up those games,” James Rolfe, the filmmaker and star of the series, said in an interview. “It’s the perfect nerdy treasure hunt.”
SAYWHAT...
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It seems astounding to me now that the video games are perhaps as important as the movie themselves. ” — John Cleese
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Obama raises possibility of change at the fed WASHINGTON (NY Times) — President Obama suggested that he was likely to nominate a new Federal Reserve chairman later this year, saying in a television interview aired late Monday that the current chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, had “already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to.” Obama praised Bernanke’s leadership of the Fed, which has mounted an aggressive campaign to revive the economy over the last several years. His second term as chairman of
the central bank runs through the end of January. “Well, I think Ben Bernanke has done an outstanding job,” Obama told the journalist Charlie Rose on PBS. He added later, “He has been an outstanding partner along with the White House, in helping us recover much stronger than, for example, our European partners from what could have been an economic crisis of epic proportions.” The president avoided a direct question about whether he would consider reappointing Mr. Bernanke. But the
interview, taken together with recent comments by Bernanke, reinforces a growing expectation that the administration plans to nominate a new Fed chairman later this year. The Senate needs to approve the nomination. Only three people have held the position in the last 30 years, and the Obama administration has an opportunity to put a Democrat atop the central bank for the first time since the resignation of Paul Volcker in the late 1980s. Janet Yellen, the Fed’s vice chairwoman, is widely
regarded as a leading candidate. She would become the first woman to head the Fed or any other major central bank. Other possible candidates include two former Obama advisers, Timothy F. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, and Roger Ferguson, former Fed vice chairman. Bernanke will probably face another round of questions about his own plans at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, following the end of a two-day meeting of the Fed’s policy-making committee.
N.S.A. chief: Surveillance has stopped dozens of plots
WASHINGTON (NY Times) — Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, said on Tuesday that American surveillance had helped prevent “potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” including at least 10 “homeland-based threats.” But he said that a vast majority must remain secret to avoid disclosing sources and methods. “These programs are immensely valuable for protecting our nation and securing the security of our allies,” General Alexander said at a rare public oversight hearing by the House Intelligence Committee.
The deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Sean Joyce, listed two newly disclosed cases that have now been declassified in an effort to respond to the leaking of classified information about surveillance by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor. Joyce described a plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange by a Kansas City man, whom the agency was able to identify because he was in contact with “an extremist” in Yemen who was under surveillance. Joyce also talked about a man who planned to send financial support to a terrorist group in Somalia, and who was identified because
the N.S.A. flagged his phone number as suspicious through its database of all domestic phone call logs, which was brought to light by Snowden’s disclosures. “As Americans, we value our privacy and our civil liberties,” General Alexander said. “As Americans, we also value our security and our safety. In the 12 years since the attacks on Sept. 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation. That security is a direct result of the intelligence community’s quiet efforts to better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur in 9/11.”
Boehner raises obstacle to Taliban step toward Afghan allowing immigration vote peace talks is hailed by U.S. WASHINGTON (NY Times) — Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday that he would not bring any immigration measure to the floor for a vote unless it had the support of a majority of House Republicans, raising potential new obstacles to Congressional approval of a broad immigration overhaul. As the Senate headed toward votes on amendments in its second week of considering an immigration measure, Mr. Boehner tried to put to rest discussion that he would consider pushing through an immigration bill with a combination of Democrats and a minority of receptive Republicans in the House, where conservative Republican sentiment runs strongly against allowing those who entered the country illegally
to qualify for legal status. “I also suggested to our members today that any immigration reform bill that is going to go into law ought to have a majority of both parties’ support if we’re really serious about making that happen, and so I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have a majority support of Republicans,” Boehner said at a news conference after meeting with House Republicans. Boehner’s comments, both privately in the closed-door meeting at the Capitol Hill Club and publicly, came as some House Republicans have begun to draw a firm and vocal line in the sand, warning Boehner that his speakership could be at risk if he tries to force through an immigration bill without the support of his conference.
WASHINGTON (NY Times) — The Taliban signaled a breakthrough in efforts to open Afghan peace negotiations on Tuesday, announcing the opening of a political office in Qatar and new readiness to talk with American and Afghan officials, who said in turn that they would travel to meet insurgent negotiators there within days. If the talks begin, they would be a significant step in peace efforts that have been locked in an impasse for nearly 18 months, after the Taliban walked out and accused the United States of negotiating in bad faith. American officials have long pushed for such talks, believing them crucial to stabilizing Afghanistan after the 2014 Western military withdrawal. The Taliban overture coincided with an important symbolic moment in that withdrawal: the formal announcement on Tuesday of a complete security handover from American troops to Afghan forces across the country. And that shift has already become obvious in recent months as the Afghan forces have tangibly taken the lead. Yet since at least 2009, even top American generals maintained that it could not be won on the battlefield, and American diplomats have engaged in nearly three years of secret meetings and working through diplomatic back channels to lay the groundwork for talks to begin.