TOKYO: A Japanese software maker says it's doing its part to help fight crime — by launching an online game featuring mug shots of Japan's most-wanted fugitives.
However, the country's police aren't so crazy about the game "Slot Detective," which has already been played by more than 100,000 people.
Software designer Famista Inc. said Friday that it introduced the free, slot-machine-style game to publicize photographs of suspects in high-profile murder cases, hoping to tap into Japan's obsession with games to help police catch killers.
The game is like a typical slot machine but with mug shots instead of cherries or lemons. When three of the same mug shot line up, the player wins. The jackpots bring details of the suspect and the crime, as well as how to give tips to police and the amount of any reward offered, company official Takashi Saito said.
"We thought this could be a way to contribute to society. If you play the game, you'll remember their faces," Saito said.
Players can access the online game via computers or mobile phones. Saito said an estimated 100,000 people had accessed the game site within hours of its launch, briefly stalling a server.
The National Police Agency said Friday that while authorities appreciate the sentiment, the game inappropriately uses police property for entertainment and could distress victims.
"The mug shots of the suspects should be used in a more socially acceptable manner," the agency said in a statement.
However, police stopped short of outlawing the game and Saito said he thought it might still help — and would also be a hit.
The only problem so far, he said, is that some users said they were "scared by the fierce look of the murder suspects."
"Pachinko" pinball games and a slot-machine-like variation called "pachi-slot" machines are popular in Japan and are played at tens of thousands of brightly lit and noisy parlors across the country.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Crime News Media
New Games
Casino News
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Vegas bids to cash in with plan for $50m Mob museum, by Kevin Mitchell - The Guardian - 23rd November 2008
Defiant mayor hopes to rejuvenate his ailing city by celebrating the Mafia's role in its creation
Las Vegas, the desert city with an insatiable thirst for reinvention, is turning to some old friends to reboot its faltering economy: the Mob.
Building projects have stalled up and down the Strip, unheard of in a town where the sound of explosions on worn-out casino sites was as commonplace as gunfire, when the old constantly made way for the new. Now, as credit and the gambling nerve of the hotel bosses dry up simultaneously, the town invented by Bugsy Siegel in the Forties is going back to its dubious past for inspiration.
Work has started on a $50m museum that will open in the spring of 2010 celebrating the Mafia's links with the gambling capital of the world. It is an initiative that excites the mayor, Oscar Goodman, but dismays others weary of the city's historical association with organised crime.
Goodman is more than a mayor. He is a celebrity in a city that lives and dies on fame. He knew Frank Sinatra. He knew John F Kennedy. He knew Marilyn Monroe. This is a town and a civic administration that was as comfortable with the Mob and its attendant guest list as it was with the certainty of another sunny day.
Goodman told The Observer the project was 'as cool as it gets', dismissing suggestions that it might not be universally popular, given the nature of the Mob's activities.
The museum has been the subject of controversy since it was announced in October. 'The Mob museum and media try to romanticise these monsters for money,' wrote a blogger on the Las Vegas Review Journal's website. 'These romantic characters are really just lunatics and degenerates who preyed off society. If Las Vegas wants a museum, build one to commemorate the victims, not the criminals.' There is no denying, though, that exploiting the fascination with gangsters here is a profitable exercise. On a two-and-half-hour, $70 'Mob Tour of Las Vegas' last week, Vinny the guide said that even real-life hoodlums come to have a look.
'Three weeks ago,' he said, 'we had Henry Hill, who is in and out of witness protection, and was played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. He was pretty stewed. But he loved it.'
Goodman said: 'Nobody's given me an opinion other than they like it. You want a watercolour museum? You want a porcelain museum?' A robust populist who mines his colourful past as a prop in his political shtick, Goodman is in his third and final term, a Democrat approved by eight out of 10 voters in a city that is an unashamed cathedral to capitalism.
Goodman is no ordinary civic leader. As he is occasionally reminded, over three decades he acted as counsel for some of the country's most notorious mobsters, men who built and ran Las Vegas. His clients included Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal and Anthony 'Tony the Ant' Spilotro, whose barely disguised doppelgangers were portrayed by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in the eerily accurate 1995 movie Casino (in which Goodman had a walk-on part).
And, no, he did not find his own 'Mob history' an embarrassment. 'What? To defend people, and protect their constitutional rights, and make sure that the government doesn't take advantage of them? You find that offensive? That's the reason we left England. OK?
'I don't care whether it is or it isn't [popular]. I care that there are people going in there and spending a lot of money and the city of Las Vegas is getting the fees and the concession money and making a fortune. It's going to be phenomenal. It's going to bring hundreds of thousands of people into our downtown.'
It might be stretching it to say Goodman 'knows where the bodies are buried' in anything other than a metaphorical sense, but he does know how to generate money. And the city that has been his home since he moved to Nevada from Philadelphia in the Sixties as a public defender has rarely needed his entrepreneurial instincts more than now.
Statistics released last week make grim reading: visitor numbers are down 10 per cent, year on year, to 2.9 million in September; room rates have been slashed by 21 per cent as tou6rist numbers dwindle; hotel occupancy is 84.3 per cent, down 7 per cent; across Nevada, gambling revenue dropped 5.4 per cent to just over $1bn; and on the Strip the take was a mere $525.5m for the month, down 5.17 per cent.
Those are numbers of dollars lost by Mr and Mrs Wisconsin at the slot machines, as well as the high-rollers at the baccarat tables. Las Vegas wins because it is full of losers. 'Life is a risk,' said Goodman. 'When I have my drink tonight, I'm risking it may be my last.'
The Mob Museum has been his pet project since he was elected in 1999. He got the idea from an unusual source: the old Post Office down the street from City Hall. It was in that building in 1950 that Senator Estes Kefauver conducted the Nevada leg of his famous inquiry into organised crime, butting up against the intransigence of witnesses unbothered by official scrutiny.
'We hired the folks who are doing the Spy Museum in Washington DC,' Goodman said. 'When you go in there you're going to be mugged, you're going to be booked, you're going to have your Miranda rights [the 'right to remain silent' legislation] given to you. And who knows if you'll ever get out? Because we're going to have machine-guns there, which will be provided by the FBI.'
(Credit: The Guardian)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Las Vegas
Casino Travel and Tourism
Casino
Casino News
Las Vegas, the desert city with an insatiable thirst for reinvention, is turning to some old friends to reboot its faltering economy: the Mob.
Building projects have stalled up and down the Strip, unheard of in a town where the sound of explosions on worn-out casino sites was as commonplace as gunfire, when the old constantly made way for the new. Now, as credit and the gambling nerve of the hotel bosses dry up simultaneously, the town invented by Bugsy Siegel in the Forties is going back to its dubious past for inspiration.
Work has started on a $50m museum that will open in the spring of 2010 celebrating the Mafia's links with the gambling capital of the world. It is an initiative that excites the mayor, Oscar Goodman, but dismays others weary of the city's historical association with organised crime.
Goodman is more than a mayor. He is a celebrity in a city that lives and dies on fame. He knew Frank Sinatra. He knew John F Kennedy. He knew Marilyn Monroe. This is a town and a civic administration that was as comfortable with the Mob and its attendant guest list as it was with the certainty of another sunny day.
Goodman told The Observer the project was 'as cool as it gets', dismissing suggestions that it might not be universally popular, given the nature of the Mob's activities.
The museum has been the subject of controversy since it was announced in October. 'The Mob museum and media try to romanticise these monsters for money,' wrote a blogger on the Las Vegas Review Journal's website. 'These romantic characters are really just lunatics and degenerates who preyed off society. If Las Vegas wants a museum, build one to commemorate the victims, not the criminals.' There is no denying, though, that exploiting the fascination with gangsters here is a profitable exercise. On a two-and-half-hour, $70 'Mob Tour of Las Vegas' last week, Vinny the guide said that even real-life hoodlums come to have a look.
'Three weeks ago,' he said, 'we had Henry Hill, who is in and out of witness protection, and was played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. He was pretty stewed. But he loved it.'
Goodman said: 'Nobody's given me an opinion other than they like it. You want a watercolour museum? You want a porcelain museum?' A robust populist who mines his colourful past as a prop in his political shtick, Goodman is in his third and final term, a Democrat approved by eight out of 10 voters in a city that is an unashamed cathedral to capitalism.
Goodman is no ordinary civic leader. As he is occasionally reminded, over three decades he acted as counsel for some of the country's most notorious mobsters, men who built and ran Las Vegas. His clients included Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal and Anthony 'Tony the Ant' Spilotro, whose barely disguised doppelgangers were portrayed by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in the eerily accurate 1995 movie Casino (in which Goodman had a walk-on part).
And, no, he did not find his own 'Mob history' an embarrassment. 'What? To defend people, and protect their constitutional rights, and make sure that the government doesn't take advantage of them? You find that offensive? That's the reason we left England. OK?
'I don't care whether it is or it isn't [popular]. I care that there are people going in there and spending a lot of money and the city of Las Vegas is getting the fees and the concession money and making a fortune. It's going to be phenomenal. It's going to bring hundreds of thousands of people into our downtown.'
It might be stretching it to say Goodman 'knows where the bodies are buried' in anything other than a metaphorical sense, but he does know how to generate money. And the city that has been his home since he moved to Nevada from Philadelphia in the Sixties as a public defender has rarely needed his entrepreneurial instincts more than now.
Statistics released last week make grim reading: visitor numbers are down 10 per cent, year on year, to 2.9 million in September; room rates have been slashed by 21 per cent as tou6rist numbers dwindle; hotel occupancy is 84.3 per cent, down 7 per cent; across Nevada, gambling revenue dropped 5.4 per cent to just over $1bn; and on the Strip the take was a mere $525.5m for the month, down 5.17 per cent.
Those are numbers of dollars lost by Mr and Mrs Wisconsin at the slot machines, as well as the high-rollers at the baccarat tables. Las Vegas wins because it is full of losers. 'Life is a risk,' said Goodman. 'When I have my drink tonight, I'm risking it may be my last.'
The Mob Museum has been his pet project since he was elected in 1999. He got the idea from an unusual source: the old Post Office down the street from City Hall. It was in that building in 1950 that Senator Estes Kefauver conducted the Nevada leg of his famous inquiry into organised crime, butting up against the intransigence of witnesses unbothered by official scrutiny.
'We hired the folks who are doing the Spy Museum in Washington DC,' Goodman said. 'When you go in there you're going to be mugged, you're going to be booked, you're going to have your Miranda rights [the 'right to remain silent' legislation] given to you. And who knows if you'll ever get out? Because we're going to have machine-guns there, which will be provided by the FBI.'
(Credit: The Guardian)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Las Vegas
Casino Travel and Tourism
Casino
Casino News
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Bond lads dine for a song, by Emily Dunn and Kelsey Munro - The Sydney Morning Herald - 18th November 2008
In what is unlikely to shake the confidence of Daniel Craig, branded the "best Bond ever" by some critics, Sydney is hosting another legendary James Bond this week.
With tough-guy Craig in town to promote the new Bond flick Quantum Of Solace, Sir Roger Moore, who followed Sean Connery as the suave British spy in seven films from 1973's Live And Let Die to 1985's A View To A Kill, arrived yesterday to spruik his autobiography My Word Is My Bond. Knighted in 2003 for his work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the urbane Sir Roger was booked to have dinner at ARIA tonight, 24 hours after Craig dined there with 007 producer Barbara Broccoli. Now there's a missed photo opportunity.
Perhaps it's for the best: Moore, now 81, made headlines last week when he told reporters he was "sad" that the new Bond movies were so violent. He, of course, preferred to play up to Bond's womanising ways.
Stay in Touch's mole at ARIA confirmed, disappointingly, that no martinis were ordered by the current Bond's table.
SURPRISE ROLE
The filmmaker Marc Forster admitted yesterday he was surprised when the producers of the James Bond franchise invited him to direct Quantum Of Solace.
"I was a little surprised, I was not so sure I wanted to do a Bond movie," said Forster, best known for films with the "critically acclaimed" tag, included the Academy Award-winning Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and last year's adaptation of the Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner. Forster's interpretation of the superspy is grittier than most. Following on from where Casino Royale left off, Bond is still heartbroken after and looking to avenge the death of his love interest Vesper and, in the meantime, destroy a crime syndicate seeking to control the water supply of Bolivia.
Forster said some of the crew were none too happy when he chose to film a large part of the production in the streets of Panama City, along with desertscape sequences in Mexico. "I don't think it was as glamorous as what they had in mind," Forster told SiT.
ALL HARD WORK
One cast member who wasn't expecting cocktails in the Caribbean on the set of Bond was the star of the film, Daniel Craig. "That's not really what a Bond film is about," the shoot-'em-up Craig told SiT yesterday.
He said making Quantum of Solace was a natural progression. Casino Royale "felt like the beginning of a story rather than the ending of a story", he said.
And while in Casino Royale he broke the rules by falling in love, this time Craig again snubbed Bond conventions by not going to bed with the leading lady, Camille, played by the Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko. "It would have been wrong if he had jumped into bed with her … he tends to fall in love a lot in the books, where he meets somebody and there is a passionate connection."
Craig, who is signed for a third Bond film, also denied reports he hoped the next Bond would be played by a black actor. "I never said that … James Bond is a white Etonian … [but] whoever does take it on, however, you want to say to them to have the best time they can because it is an extraordinary thing to do."
(Credit: Fairfax)
Media Man Australia Profiles
James Bond
With tough-guy Craig in town to promote the new Bond flick Quantum Of Solace, Sir Roger Moore, who followed Sean Connery as the suave British spy in seven films from 1973's Live And Let Die to 1985's A View To A Kill, arrived yesterday to spruik his autobiography My Word Is My Bond. Knighted in 2003 for his work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the urbane Sir Roger was booked to have dinner at ARIA tonight, 24 hours after Craig dined there with 007 producer Barbara Broccoli. Now there's a missed photo opportunity.
Perhaps it's for the best: Moore, now 81, made headlines last week when he told reporters he was "sad" that the new Bond movies were so violent. He, of course, preferred to play up to Bond's womanising ways.
Stay in Touch's mole at ARIA confirmed, disappointingly, that no martinis were ordered by the current Bond's table.
SURPRISE ROLE
The filmmaker Marc Forster admitted yesterday he was surprised when the producers of the James Bond franchise invited him to direct Quantum Of Solace.
"I was a little surprised, I was not so sure I wanted to do a Bond movie," said Forster, best known for films with the "critically acclaimed" tag, included the Academy Award-winning Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and last year's adaptation of the Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner. Forster's interpretation of the superspy is grittier than most. Following on from where Casino Royale left off, Bond is still heartbroken after and looking to avenge the death of his love interest Vesper and, in the meantime, destroy a crime syndicate seeking to control the water supply of Bolivia.
Forster said some of the crew were none too happy when he chose to film a large part of the production in the streets of Panama City, along with desertscape sequences in Mexico. "I don't think it was as glamorous as what they had in mind," Forster told SiT.
ALL HARD WORK
One cast member who wasn't expecting cocktails in the Caribbean on the set of Bond was the star of the film, Daniel Craig. "That's not really what a Bond film is about," the shoot-'em-up Craig told SiT yesterday.
He said making Quantum of Solace was a natural progression. Casino Royale "felt like the beginning of a story rather than the ending of a story", he said.
And while in Casino Royale he broke the rules by falling in love, this time Craig again snubbed Bond conventions by not going to bed with the leading lady, Camille, played by the Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko. "It would have been wrong if he had jumped into bed with her … he tends to fall in love a lot in the books, where he meets somebody and there is a passionate connection."
Craig, who is signed for a third Bond film, also denied reports he hoped the next Bond would be played by a black actor. "I never said that … James Bond is a white Etonian … [but] whoever does take it on, however, you want to say to them to have the best time they can because it is an extraordinary thing to do."
(Credit: Fairfax)
Media Man Australia Profiles
James Bond
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Gatto, Williams hit with casino, racetrack ban, by Michael Warner - Herald Sun - 27th June 2008
* Gangsters, thugs, dealers banned from casino
* They've also been blacklisted from racetracks
* Gatto and Williams among those banned
A ROGUES' gallery of gangsters, thugs, drug dealers and loan sharks is among a secret group of Victorians banned from Crown casino and 67 racetracks.
The Herald Sun can reveal 33 "undesirables" have been slapped with lifetime bans by police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.
But in a challenge to her powers, at least two have vowed to fight the bans in the Supreme Court.
Those banned include underworld identity Mick Gatto, alleged Carlton Crew associate Steve Kaya and gangland figure Michael "Eyes" Pastras.
Jailed gangland figure Carl Williams is also blacklisted along with his father George.
Others include convicted money launderer Fadi Sarkis, high-roller Rob Karam and Leanne Allmark, a pathological gambler who stole $1 million to feed a casino pokies addiction.
Photographs have been circulated to police, casino surveillance officers and racing stewards.
Those banned cannot set foot within Melbourne's Southbank casino complex, including restaurants, or any Victorian racetrack.
But the Herald Sun cannot reveal the identity of all 33 individuals because of court proceedings.
The group includes notorious bikies, members of powerful Asian crime gangs and loan sharks caught preying on desperate punters.
Eight of the 33 are women.
The oldest on the list is a grandfather in his 80s.
Section 74 of the Casino Control Act (1991) allows Ms Nixon to "prohibit a person from entering or remaining in a casino".
Most of the bans extend to Victoria's 67 thoroughbred, harness and greyhound tracks, including Flemington, Caulfield and Moonee Valley.
Crown has been a favourite haunt of some of Melbourne's most notorious underworld figures.
Slain Carlton Crew figure Mario Condello was one of the first to be banned. He once pulled a 30cm knife on a fellow gambler in the Mahogany Room toilets, demanding he hand over cash. (Credit: News.com.au)
* They've also been blacklisted from racetracks
* Gatto and Williams among those banned
A ROGUES' gallery of gangsters, thugs, drug dealers and loan sharks is among a secret group of Victorians banned from Crown casino and 67 racetracks.
The Herald Sun can reveal 33 "undesirables" have been slapped with lifetime bans by police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.
But in a challenge to her powers, at least two have vowed to fight the bans in the Supreme Court.
Those banned include underworld identity Mick Gatto, alleged Carlton Crew associate Steve Kaya and gangland figure Michael "Eyes" Pastras.
Jailed gangland figure Carl Williams is also blacklisted along with his father George.
Others include convicted money launderer Fadi Sarkis, high-roller Rob Karam and Leanne Allmark, a pathological gambler who stole $1 million to feed a casino pokies addiction.
Photographs have been circulated to police, casino surveillance officers and racing stewards.
Those banned cannot set foot within Melbourne's Southbank casino complex, including restaurants, or any Victorian racetrack.
But the Herald Sun cannot reveal the identity of all 33 individuals because of court proceedings.
The group includes notorious bikies, members of powerful Asian crime gangs and loan sharks caught preying on desperate punters.
Eight of the 33 are women.
The oldest on the list is a grandfather in his 80s.
Section 74 of the Casino Control Act (1991) allows Ms Nixon to "prohibit a person from entering or remaining in a casino".
Most of the bans extend to Victoria's 67 thoroughbred, harness and greyhound tracks, including Flemington, Caulfield and Moonee Valley.
Crown has been a favourite haunt of some of Melbourne's most notorious underworld figures.
Slain Carlton Crew figure Mario Condello was one of the first to be banned. He once pulled a 30cm knife on a fellow gambler in the Mahogany Room toilets, demanding he hand over cash. (Credit: News.com.au)
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