Category: Uncategorised

I Am Setsuna is all about nostalgia. Sure, it doesn't rehash a familiar franchise, or dig up a cast of long forgotten characters, but it does serve up a mixture of PlayStation-era graphics and storytelling that harks back to the classic '90s RPGs that came to the West from Japan. The result, from the few of hours I've played, is a game that feels reassuringly familiar without being gratuitously mercantile in the process.

The story begins grimly, taking a more adult approach than is typical of the genre. You play as Endir, a warrior born into a tribe that pays its way through the world by offering mercenary services to whomever needs them. Following Endir's impressive feat of heroism in saving a girl from a monster (a sequence that acts as tutorial for the turn-based combat system), he is commissioned to kill another girl, Setsuna, who is about to turn 18.

Without straying too far into spoiler territory, it turns out Endir's mission is part of a series of regular sacrifices that are made to prevent monster attacks on settlements. Those attacks have been becoming more frequent, leading to more sacrifices. Before you can kill Setsuna, which Endir is more than ready to do given his sell-sword lineage, you're stopped by a small group seeking to end the cycle of teen killings. After some negotiation Endir becomes a reluctant member of the group.

(credit: shiftstigma)

Electronic books should be treated just like physical books for the purposes of lending, an advisor to Europe's top court has said.

Maciej Szpunar, advocate general to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), said that public libraries should be allowed to lend e-books so long as the author is fairly compensated.

A 2006 EU directive says that the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit rentals and loans belongs to the author of the work, however countries may opt out of this rule for the purposes of “public lending,” provided that authors obtain fair remuneration.

Website where Ammon customers will choose an ISP. (credit: City of Ammon, Idaho)

Most cities and towns that build their own broadband networks do so to solve a single problem: that residents and businesses aren't being adequately served by private cable companies and telcos.

But there's more than one way to create a network and offer service, and the city of Ammon, Idaho, is deploying a model that's worth examining. Ammon has built an open access network that lets multiple private ISPs offer service to customers over city-owned fiber. The wholesale model in itself isn't unprecedented, but Ammon has also built a system in which residents will be able to sign up for an ISP—or switch ISPs if they are dissatisfied—almost instantly, just by visiting a city-operated website and without changing any equipment.

Ammon has completed a pilot project involving 12 homes and is getting ready for construction to another 200 homes. Eventually, the city wants to wire up all of its 4,500 homes and apartment buildings, city Technology Director Bruce Patterson told Ars. Ammon has already deployed fiber to businesses in the city, and it did so without raising everybody's taxes.