Slashdot Mirror

Krazy Kanuck writes "Introduced in 2010, Online Pass was marketed as a way to 'preserve' online content or DLC as titles were sold in the used game market. Many saw this as a way to cut out the second hand game market. EA has now decided to end this program 'partly because the players didn't like it.' Unfortunately this appears to only be for future released games, those previously released will still be subject to this feature. Activision and Ubisoft still use this form of content control, it will be interesting to see if they follow suit."

ducomputergeek writes "Since the assault weapons ban seems to have died in Congress, it looks like Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) now turning her attention to video games...again. '"If Sandy Hook doesn't [make game publishers change] then maybe we have to proceed, but that is in the future," said Feinstein. She went on to claim that video games play "a very negative role for young people, and the industry ought to take note of that."' Yet, as the article points out, since the introduction of games like DOOM, the crime rate in the U.S. has gone down. Dramatically. Correlation != causation, and all that jazz, but there are a lot of violent video games these days and yet crime has continued to go down."

Paul Fernhout writes with a snippet from Joystiq: "Voxel.js is a new open-source project designed to allow anyone to create 3D games that run directly in a browser. Created by Max Ogden and James Halliday, Voxel.js is based on JavaScript and WebGL, and makes it relatively easy to build Minecraft-like games that play in browsers like Chrome." Paul adds a link to this interview with Max Ogden about the creation of Voxel.js in 22 days. The main site is at Voxel.js.

Nerdfest writes "Venturebeat is reporting that a successfully funded Kickstarter project for a portable phone charger that works with both Apple and Android devices has been canceled because Apple wouldn't let the creators license its Lightning connector. Quoting: 'Edison Junior, the technology and design lab behind the POP portable power station, is returning the full $139,170 in funding it received from Kickstarter backers to develop the device. Unfortunately, Apple has refused to give the project permission to license the Lightning charger in a device that includes multiple charging options. ... "We didn’t get a yes or a no up front," Siminoff said. "But as we kept going back and forth it was clear that it was getting harder. Then, when we saw that they weren’t even going to allow a Lightning connector and a 30-pin connector together, we knew it was over." He also said that, while Apple is a private company and can do whatever it wishes, it should watch out. "When you do things that are bad for the customer I think it will be bad for them.”''" Update: 12/21 22:16 GMT by S : Apple has relented. A spokesman for the company told Ars, "Our technical specifications provide clear guidelines for developing accessories and they are available to MFi licensees for free. We support accessories that integrate USB and Lightning connectors, but there were technical issues that prevented accessories from integrating 30-pin and Lightning connectors so our guidelines did not allow this. We have been working to resolve this and have updated our guidelines to allow accessories to integrate both 30-pin and Lightning connectors to support charging."

Bennett Haselton writes: "Online political futures betting is in a legal limbo in the United States. But with the lifting of legal sanctions, and with the addition of one simple new feature, online futures betting could not only provide more accurate forecasts of the merits of different candidates, but also provide a tool for quieting partisan blowhards who think the opposing party's candidate is going to drag the country to hell. Let the blowhards bet!" You'll find the rest of Bennett's story below.

Did you have a strongly felt prediction about the 2012 elections that went against the conventional wisdom? Then you could have placed a bet at the Iowa Electronic Markets website (with real money); yet most people don't know the website exists. Indeed, it's only able to exist at all because of an exemption from U.S. laws that make other political betting websites illegal. The Irish-based online political betting site Intrade doesn't even accept American customers (you can't wire money to them from a U.S. based account), and their late CEO reportedly told John Stossel he was afraid of being arrested if he set foot in the U.S.

That's too bad, because I think that legalized Web-based betting on political outcomes could serve two valuable purposes in American politics: to provide forecasts of the relative merits of living under either of two candidates, and to force partisan blowhards to seriously consider whether they actually mean what they say. But in order to make this happen, in addition to the government lifting any legal restrictions on the ability of such sites to operate, I think a valuable additional feature would be the ability to place "if-bets", betting on particular events (the level of unemployment, for example) if a particular candidate were elected.

In September I happened to stop by the King County Republicans booth at the Puyallup Fair, and asked one volunteer, just for the sake of argument, what he thought was the best case against re-electing President Obama. (I'm a liberal, but I spend more time reading conservative blogs and opinion pieces than liberal ones, partly just to see what pieces I might agree with.) He said flatly that if President Obama were re-elected, unemployment could rise as high as 20 percent, and listed some other dire figures.

Well, I didn't consider that an "argument", but I asked him, "Would you be willing to bet on it?" -- not proposing that we actually wager, but asking him to think seriously about whether he would be willing to wager, if it were an option. In other words, if Obama is re-elected, and employment rises to 20 percent some time in the next four years (or perhaps if average employment over 4 years is above some designated threshold), then I pay my new Republican friend $100. If Obama is re-elected and no such thing happens, then the Republican pays me $100. If Obama is not re-elected, then the whole wager is void. After I spelled this out, the volunteer got a thoughtful look -- as if he were thinking, for perhaps the first time, whether he really believed what he had been saying. (Of course I've probably made similarly ill-thought-out predictions about politicians that I disliked, where the offer of a wager would have made me stop and think harder about what I actually believed.)

It would be easy for Intrade and similar companies to support these kinds of conditional "if-bets". Then their website could list data on, for example, what the bettors currently think are the odds of unemployment reaching 20% (or 15%, or 25%) if Obama were re-elected, or if Romney were elected. Ideally there would be a different betting market for each percentage point -- and you could aggregate all the market odds for those percentages into one simple graph, with a bell curve showing what the market thinks are the odds of employment hitting 10%, 11%, 12%, etc. under either Obama or Romney.

The first benefit of such a system would be obvious: to the extent that betting markets are an accurate predictor of political outcomes, this would be an easy way to see what conventional wisdom projected for unemployment, inflation, infant morality rates, or any other statistic that Intrade accepted bets on, if either candidate were elected. As long as either candidate had a realistic chance of winning, the people wagering on the "if-bets" would have to take them seriously. (If one candidate had virtually no chance of winning, then the "if-bets" conditional on that candidate's victory might not show anything useful, since everyone expects the bets will be declared void. So it wouldn't work for evaluating the merits of a long-shot candidate like Jill Stein - who might have some good ideas, but the "if-bet" betting markets wouldn't be able to tell us that.)

The second benefit would be that whenever anyone claimed projections that departed radically from the market odds, you could simply ask them, "Why not go to Intrade and bet on it?" If a person really believed that their dire predictions were more likely than the market seemed to think, then they could wager accordingly. Even if they don't think their prediction is likely to come true, as long as they think an event is more likely than the market seems to think, they should still believe that they could make money in the long run by betting accordingly. (For example, if you think there's only a 1-in-3 chance that Romney will win, but the market says 1-in-5, you should bet that Romney will win, at the 4-to-1 odds offered by the market. If you bet on lots of separate events where you think the probability of event occurring is 1/3 but the market says 1/5, then if you're right and the probabilities really are about 1/3, you'll lose 2 out of 3 times, but every 3rd time you'll make back 5 times the amount of your wager, and come out ahead. Assuming that you really are smarter than the market, of course.)

There could be rules and safeguards to prevent abuses of the system (rules that could be imposed by U.S. law, even if they're not enforced by overseas betting markets), such as not allowing individuals to bet more than $500. (This is already enforced by the Iowa Electronic Markets.) That's small enough to stop individual bettors from trying to manipulate the market through enormous wagers (although they might find ways to do that anyway). It's also small enough that it wouldn't be worth it for any one individual to try and influence a political outcome just to win a bet. You could try to enlist your friends to help you place a collective $10,000 bet on a single outcome, but the more people you rope into your coalition, the greater the chances of someone (a) turning you in for violating the betting laws, or (b) taking the $500 you lent them, and then refusing to pay it back if they win their portion of the wager.

At the same time, the $500 limit is large enough that anyone who makes a bold claim about the future, could not plausibly claim that it's not worth their time to go over to Intrade and make a wager. (Well, billionaires could claim it's not worth their time. We could have a higher limit for higher-income individuals, but the problem is that for someone like Donald Trump, any betting limit large enough to get him to take the wager seriously, would also be large enough to allow him to manipulate the market. So we might just have to get by on ignoring Trump the old-fashioned way.)

However, even if Intrade implemented "if-bets", and even if futures betting were made unambiguously legal under U.S. law, we'd have to overcome a certain amount of cultural taboo against betting on politics, especially for members of certain professions. When Joe Scarborough called Nate Silver a "joke" for saying that Obama had a 75% chance of winning, Nate Silver gave exactly the right response: "Wanna bet?" (for charity). However, the New York Times Public Editor (an office that I've dealt with in the past) rebuked Nate Silver for offering the wager, although in a 600-word essay, the Public Editor wrote only one sentence saying why she thought it was a bad idea: because it "[gives] ammunition to the critics who want to paint Mr. Silver as a partisan who is trying to sway the outcome". This doesn't make much sense, since Nate Silver had already staked his reputation on the outcome, which was worth astronomically more to him than the $1,000 (so to the extent that he had any conflict of interest, it would have already been in place anyway). Still, for anyone in a profession that placed a high value on "perceived objectivity", they might be able to use that as an excuse for not placing a wager.

Even for the rest of us not in danger of finger-wagging from the Times Public Editor, I think there would be one big obstacle to using the markets to tell blowhards to "place your bets or shut up": people would come up with dumbass excuses not to do it. I can't even anticipate the kinds of excuses that people might make, because I think I just think too rationally (at least by my own definition), so I tend to anticipate semi-logical objections like, "I think Romney will win, so I don't want to support a system that says he will lose." To that I would say: If you think the market odds are wrong, you should place the bet anyway, and if you win, you'll be taking money from the people who bet that Romney would lose, not "supporting" them. And in fact by placing the bet, you will slightly increase the market-reported odds of Romney winning. So you'll be taking money from the people who bet against your guy, and shifting the reported odds in favor of a Romney victory, which ought to be a win-win. Even better, if you're sure he'll win, you'll have winnings afterward that you can donate to the Republican Party.

So while I don't think that's a valid objection, it at least has the form of a logical argument, which is what makes it possible to answer it. The excuses that I think people would actually give, would be along the lines of, "I don't do that." Well, if you want to support your candidate and you're confident in your predictions, why not? Or, "I think it's wrong to bet against the future of our country." Hey, if you place a bet that unemployment will go up under Obama, then that will be reported in the aggregate forecasts of what the market thinks will happen under the two candidates -- which will actually slightly increase the chance of a Romney win (which is presumably what you want), right? Besides, you realize that if you have life insurance on your spouse, you're "betting" every month that they will die? How much more ethical is that?

But for everyone else who wouldn't come up with excuses not to bet on the outcomes, I wonder, in what might be hopeful naivete, if the available of online political "if-betting" might bring our partisan extremes closer together. When my Republican counterpart and I were discussing the future of the nation under Obama or Romney, if we were forced to confront the possibility of betting on the result (not betting on who would win, but betting on what would happen if a particular candidate won), I think several things would have gone through my mind. First, I might realize that despite any stridently partisan statements I had made, I didn't really know with much confidence what would happen. Second, the humility of realizing that I would want to check the online prediction markets, because I think the rest of the world collectively has more wisdom on the matter than I do. And third, if the online prediction markets showed projected similar outcomes (for unemployment, for example) no matter who is elected, then we could calmly accept the fact that neither candidate is going to be able to perform miracles, but neither candidate is going to destroy the country either, so we can accept the fact that the country will probably do OK no matter who wins, and go have a beer.

Assuming, of course, the other guy felt the same way. I can get along fine with people who don't agree with me, but I don't think I'd get along with someone who didn't even want to seriously consider whether he really believed the things he was saying. However, if the various competing futures markets would implement "if-bets", and if the U.S. government would just give the OK to online futures betting generally, I'd be perfectly happy to take the guy's money.

colinneagle writes "Microsoft has promised that cross-platform development across the 8s – from Windows 8 on a desktop to Windows Phone 8 – will be a simple matter, but that's still not enough to get some developers moving on Windows Phone 8 support. The Windows Phone platform has made a remarkable recovery since its reset with version 7. Since then, WP7 has grown to 100,000 apps. But that pales in comparison to the 675,000 in Google Play and 700,000 in the Apple App Store. Granted, there's a ton of redundancy – how many weather or newsfeed apps does one person need? – but it points to availability and developer support. A report from VentureBeat points out what should be obvious: that while developers like Windows 8, they aren't as excited about Windows Phone 8 software because they have already made huge investments in other platforms and don't want to support another platform. A survey by IDC and Appcelerator found 78% of Android developers were 'very interested' in programming for Android smartphones, a slight drop from the 83% in a prior survey. Interest in the iPhone and iPad remained undiminished, with 89% and 88% interest, respectively."

First time accepted submitter ze_jua writes "In this article, Jay Goldberg, a financial analyst who travels to Shenzhen several times a year, analyses the potential consequences of the very low cost of hardware he found there on the consumer electronic industry worldwide. He wrote this piece of text after he found a very nice $45 Android 4 tablet. Are we so close to given-away tablets?"

An anonymous reader tips a story at VentureBeat about a company that helps game developers analyze data gathered from their games to detect cheaters. But now, the company says this data can also be used to determine other traits of the players, like whether they're minors, or whether they like to gamble. Their CEO, Lukasz Twardowski, expects such analysis will soon be able to reveal even more traits, like whether a player is color blind, has a developmental disorder, or has Alzheimer's disease. "'Games are the richest and the most meaningful form of human-computer interaction. ...By tracking how they play games, we can learn a lot about people,' Twardowski explained. Hesitatingly, he added: 'That will be a huge responsibility for us later on.' ... Academics have begun to take games more seriously, as a window into the human psyche. Games are addictive and immersive and are built to command hours of our time and attention. What better testbed for myriad psychological and medical conditions? A good game pushes us to our limits, challenging us to use both the analytical and intuitive sides of our brain.

1sockchuck writes "An Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia lost power Friday night during an electrical storm, causing downtime for numerous customers — including Netflix, which uses an architecture designed to route around problems at a single availability zone. The same data center suffered a power outage two weeks ago and had connectivity problems earlier on Friday."

BogenDorpher writes with news that Microsoft has officially introduced Windows Phone 8. The new version of their mobile operating system will bring support for processors with up to 64 cores, as well as resolutions higher than 800x480 — up to 1280x768. It will also include better support for NFC and microSD cards. One important thing to note is that Windows Phone 8 won't be coming to current Windows Phone devices.

An anonymous reader writes with news that Groupon is testing out a service for letting merchants accept credit cards that could put it into competition with PayPal and Square. "Groupon's nascent payment service comes with an Apple iPod Touch, and a case that wraps around the back of the device, which allows merchants to swipe credit cards." The fee structure isn't finalized, but their aim is to be competitive with PayPal and Square. "Groupon may have flexibility to charge lower fees because it could subsidize the payments service from money it makes providing other services to merchants, they said. PayPal's service, known as PayPal Here, charges a fee of 2.7 percent of the purchase price for all types of credit and debit cards - including those issued by American Express Co.. Transaction fees for processing AmEx cards are often higher. Square charges 2.75 percent per swipe. Groupon's test service is charging a 1.8 percent transaction fee and 15 cents per transaction, Rocky Agrawal, an industry analyst, reported in a VentureBeat blog late Thursday."

markjhood2003 writes "Fresh on the heels of Slashdot's discussion of the lack of browser choice on mobile devices comes the announcement of Yahoo's new web browser Axis. According to VentureBeat, the browser runs on iPad and iPhone as a separate standalone browser and as an extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, with support for Android and Windows Phone coming soon. It actually appears to bring some innovation to mobile search, displaying results and queries on the same page for more productive navigation between the two."

New submitter dandv writes with a story from VentureBeat about another entry in the race to escape national jurisdiction by offshoring work — literally offshoring, that is : "Blueseed is a Silicon Valley company that plans on launching a cruise ship 30 minutes from the coast of California, housing startup entrepreneurs from around the world. These startuppers won't need to bother with U.S. visas, because the ship will be in international waters. They'll have to pay tax to whatever country they're incorporated in, though. So far, 146 startups said they'd like to come to the ship."

TheGift73 writes "Retailer, C&A, is putting 'real-time Likes' counters on its hangers in locations around Brazil. The Like data is taken from C&A's Facebook page, where the company has listed its various wares for people to interact with. When a person Likes an item, that Like shows up on the hanger. It is meant to help customers with purchasing decisions. If they are unsure of one item, they can see how many people online think the product is a good buy."

An anonymous reader writes "Double Fine Adventure, the crowd-funded adventure game from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame), just crossed the $2.5 million mark in funding on Kickstarter. So far, about 73,000 enthusiastic backers have contributed an average of $35 dollars each, with 3 extravagant backers going as far as to contribute $10,000 (earning them a lunch with Schafer and Gilbert, among other goodies). The total sum is over 6 times the amount Schafer and Gilbert were initially hoping to raise ($400,000). Schafer released a few pictures showing what he's doing with all the money. The project has received attention in mainstream media (sort of), with NPR's Morning Edition covering the story."

Despite (and probably partly because of) its much-touted role as a communications link in the Arab Spring protest movements of the last year, Twitter announced a few days ago that it could be (which I take to mean "will be, and probably are") selectively blocking tweets based on local governments' requests. This AP story (as carried by stuff.co.nz) gives an overview of the negative reaction this move has drawn; unsurprisingly, there's talk of a boycott. The EFF has what seems to be a fair look at the reality of Twitter take-downs, noting that for various reasons they remove certain content already, but not as much as some parties would like; VentureBeat looks at the thousands of take-down notices the company received last year. If you use Twitter, does the recently announced region-specific blocking change what you'll use it for?

New submitter libertyernie writes "Although FileSonic has disabled sharing and Uploaded.to has blocked access to the U.S., the CEO of Texas-based MediaFire is not concerned about government action against his company. 'We don't have a business built on copyright infringement,' says Derek Labian. 'Like many other cloud-based sharing services like Box.net and Dropbox, we're a legitimate business targeting professionals.'"

PolygamousRanchKid passes along this quote: "As baffling as it may seem, HP was trying to rid itself of Palm without taking a loss on its purchase, a source with knowledge of the negotiations told [VentureBeat]. The company seemingly ignored that Palm's value had fallen significantly since HP purchased the smartphone pioneer in April 2010, thanks to the spectacular failure of the HP Touchpad tablet. And the fact that HP didn't make any progress with its new webOS phones, the Pre 3 and Veer, didn't help either. ... The $1.2 billion asking price shines some light on a story we heard from another source: At one point, HP's team tried to pitch the sale to Facebook but was practically laughed out of the room. And yes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was present at the meeting, although he apparently didn't say much (I'm sure whatever he was thinking at the time would have been gold)."

beaverdownunder writes "An Italian watchdog has fined Apple 900,000 euros ($1.2m, £750,000) for failing to inform Italian shoppers of their legal right to two years of technical support, recognizing instead only a one-year standard warranty. This had led people to pay extra for Apple's own support service, AppleCare, which overlapped with the government-mandated guarantee."

ryzvonusef writes "VentureBeat's (typically unnamed) sources identifies Intel and Qualcomm as being involved in talks for acquiring the Palm asset portfolio. However, citing sources intimate with HP's negotiations, it reports that the company wants to be able to license webOS back for use in printers; it wants it so much, in fact, that the issue has become 'a crucial part' of discussions. Maybe there's something about webOS and printers that HP knows and the rest of the world doesn't."

hazytodd was one of several readers to tip news of Sprint Nextel's plan to grab a piece of the iPhone action in order to halt the company's downward slide. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Sprint has committed to buying 30.5 million iPhones over the next five years (summary of paywalled WSJ story), which at retail rates works out to roughly $20 billion. "To sell that many iPhones, Sprint would have to double its rolls of contract customers, convert all of them to the Apple device or a combination of the two." A separate rumor at Boy Genius Report suggests the iPhone 5 may be a Sprint exclusive until sometime next year, with Verizon and AT&T getting the upgraded iPhone 4S until then. Apple is holding an event to unveil the new phone tomorrow.

Nemilar writes with this excerpt from VentureBeat: "Who will save what's left of Palm from HP's bumbling? It could be Amazon, as the online retailing giant is in serious negotiations to snap up Palm from HP. No other company seems as fitting a home for Palm and its webOS software. It's worth noting that former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, who now holds a vague 'product innovation' role at HP's Personal Services Group, joined Amazon's board late last year."

An anonymous reader writes "British police have arrested a 19-year-old man believed to be 'Topiary', the official spokesperson of the LulzSec hactivist group. The man was arrested at his home in the Shetland Islands earlier today (July 27), and is being transported to a central London police station." Also today, LulzSec has called for a boycott of PayPal saying “We encourage anyone using PayPal to immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative.”

blair1q writes "Venture Beat reports that a study (PDF) by Berkeley National Labs has found that homes sold in California earned a premium for solar panels. The benefit ranged from $3900 to $6400 per kW of capacity. An earlier study found that proximity to solar or wind power may also raise home values. These results contradict the arguments based on degrading home values used by putative NIMBY (Not In My Back-Yard) opponents to installing or living near such energy-generating equipment."

donniebaseball23 writes "OnLive may have its long-term sights on entertainment besides games, especially with the hiring of Pandora executive Etienne Handman, but for now the cloud-based service is laser focused on taking a chunk of the games market. It has launched a Netflix-inspired all-you-can-eat plan for $9.99/month. 'The meteoric growth of Netflix reflects the enormous consumer demand for flat-rate instant-play media,' said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO. 'OnLive PlayPack is uniquely positioned to address this demand in the realm of high-performance video games, instantly delivering games ... to TVs, PCs, Macs and iPad, and soon Android tablets, smartphones and Blu-ray players.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Video games used to be about fighting aliens and rescuing princesses, writes Rohin Dharmakumar in Forbes, but the most popular games today have you tilling your farm, hiring waiting staff and devising menus for your restaurant or taking your pets out for walks while maintaining cordial relations with the neighbors. 'Reality, it would seem, is the new escapism.' Video games of the pre-social network era were mostly played by boys or young men but 'now the core audience of social network games are girls and young women,' says Alok Kejriwal, founder and CEO of games2win, an online gaming company. The tipping point in the US came in 2008 when women outnumbered men on the Internet. Combined with millions of parents and grandparents who're new to the Internet, the traditional face of the gamer is changing from that of a 25-year-old male to a band stretching from 16 to 40 years comprising men and women in almost equal numbers, says Sebastien de Halleux, one of the co-founders of Playfish, who predicts that someone is going to create a social game very shortly that pulls in a billion dollars a year. Gaming for this new set of players is less about breathtaking graphics, pulsating sound or edge-of-the-seat action and more about strengthening existing real world relations through frequent casual gaming. 'Think of these games as a sandbox where everybody has the same tools, yet everyone achieves different results,' says de Halleux."

angry tapir writes "Microsoft may be one of the only remaining mobile operating-system providers that charges handset makers a licensing fee, but in exchange vendors get at least one important benefit: protection from intellectual property worries. 'Microsoft indemnifies its Windows Phone 7 licensees against patent infringement claims,' the company said. 'We stand behind our product, and step up to our responsibility to clear the necessary IP rights.'" In related news, Windows Phone 7 will be exclusive to AT&T at launch, and it seems Microsoft is counting on Xbox Live integration to be the "hook" that gets people interested in the new devices.

siliconbits writes "Today, at the BlackBerry Developers Conference in San Francisco, company President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis kicked off the event with the widely-anticipated news that RIM is developing a tablet PC of its own. Called the BlackBerry Playbook, the device is a 'Flash-loving,' 'device-paring,' 'enterprise ready' tablet, says RIM, with a 7-inch screen. It is 9.7 millimeters thick and features a 1024x600 widescreen display. It also supports 1080p through HDMI and has a USB port." The tablet will run on a dual-core, 1GHz CPU and have 1GB RAM. Its browser will be WebKit-based, and the device will be running a brand new operating system developed by QNX software. The tablet won't have 3G access of its own when it launches, but will be able to tether to existing BlackBerry devices via Bluetooth.

I'm Not There (1956) writes "Sociologist Clifford Nass is talking about how people think of their computers as something like human beings. In one of his experiments, Nass found that people are more willing to 'help' computers when the computer helped them previously: 'When people were then asked to help optimize the screen resolution on a computer where the program had been "helpful," they were much more likely to do so than with the less helpful version.' He also found that people evaluating software's performance were more forgiving if the evaluation was done on the same computer the software was tested on. Nass has recently published the book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, in which he 'uses our interactions with machines to investigate how human relationships could be improved.'"

A pair of security researchers speaking at DefCon demonstrated how video game consoles, which are becoming increasingly common break room or team-building toys, can open vulnerabilities in corporate networks. "[They] found that many companies install Nintendo Wii devices in their work places, even though they don’t let you walk into the company with smartphones or laptops. (Factories and other sensitive work locations don’t allow any devices with cameras). By poisoning the Wii, they could spread a virus over the corporate network. People have a false sense of security about the safety of these game devices, but they can log into computer networks like most other computer devices now. In the demos, the researchers showed they could take compromised code and inject it into the main game file that runs on either a DS or a game console. They could take over the network and pretty much spread malware across it and thereby compromise an entire corporation. The researchers said they can do this with just about any embedded device, from iPhones to internet TVs."

wisebabo writes "A wallpaper utility (that presents purloined copyrighted material) 'quietly collects personal information such as SIM card numbers, text messages, subscriber identification, and voicemail passwords. The data is then sent to www.imnet.us, a site that hails from Shenzen, China.'"

1sockchuck writes "Stealthy startup SeaMicro has unveiled its new low-power server, which incorporates 512 Intel Atom CPUs, a load balancer and interconnection fabric into a 10u server. SeaMicro, which received a $9.3 million government grant from DOE to develop its technology, says its server uses less than 2 kilowatts of energy — suggesting that a single rack with four SeaMicro units and 2,048 CPUs could draw just 8 kilowatts of power. Check out the technical overview, plus additional coverage from Wired, GigaOm and VentureBeat."

darkwing_bmf sends word of Turbine's announcement that Lord of the Rings Online will become a free-to-play game this fall. 'The move is another validation of the free-to-play business model, where gamers can play for free and pay real money for virtual goods such as better weapons or decorative gear for their game characters. The business model has been popular in Asia but only recently took off in the US. This move shows the pressure is building on game publishers to shift to the new business model or face declining audiences.' According to a post on the official website, LotRO's micro-transaction system will be "very similar" to how Turbine's DDO store works, and current subscribers will maintain all of their privileges.

Precision noted that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned 26 last week, and gets to celebrate by being accused of securities fraud. This goes back to the old Facebook legend that Zuckerberg stole code from other Harvard students.

Contridictory stories are circulating after Fox News's pursuing of Wikimedia Foundation for hosting pornography reportedly resulted in Jimmy Wales personally removing some pornographic material from its servers, then giving up his special editing privileges under pressure. Fox News reported that Wikimedia is "in chaos"; this report was picked up by VentureBeat and others. Wales denies that there is any chaos (any more than usual, that is) at Wikimedia. The Fox News report apparently relied on a single unnamed source, and Wales said, "They don't even bother to contact me before publishing nonsense." The background: on April 27 Fox News published an exclusive report about porn on Wikimedia servers, then followed up by contacting organizations that had donated to Wikimedia to ask them what they thought about it. In the aftermath, Wales took a position in support of purging porn from Wikimedia Commons. This all started when estranged Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger contacted the FBI with an allegation of child porn on Wikipedia.

Barence writes "Acer is preparing to launch devices based on Google's Chrome OS at next month's Computex trade show, according to reports. Multiple sources have apparently told VentureBeat that the company will show off devices at the Taipei show at the beginning of June. It doesn't specify what the devices are, although given that Chrome OS is primarily designed for low-powered laptops and Acer's status as the world's second biggest PC maker, it seems inconceivable that the devices won't be netbooks. Meanwhile, Google is considering implementing a Coverflow interface into Chrome OS. One design adheres fairly closely to Apple's template, and allows users to flip through applications and web pages with 'hotkeys and swiping gestures.' Favicons will be displayed beneath the pages, allowing users to click these and head straight to the application."

gollum123 writes with this excerpt from VentureBeat: "Smartphones based on Google's Android mobile operating system outsold Apple's iPhone in the US during the first quarter of 2010, according to a report by research firm The NPD Group. The data places Android, with 28 percent of the smartphone market [last quarter], in second place behind RIM's Blackberry smartphone market share of 36 percent. Apple now sits in third place with 21 percent. NPD points to a Verizon buy-one-get-one-free promotion for all of its smartphones as a major factor in the first-quarter numbers. Verizon saw strong sales for the Motorola Droid and Droid Eris Android phones, as well as the Blackberry Curve, thanks to its promotional offer. Verizon launched a $100 million marketing campaign for the Droid when it hit the market in November 2009, which likely contributed to strong sales in the first quarter as well." Preston Gralla notes that it's not all bad news for Apple; this report could help their case in upcoming antitrust discussions.

A day after the release of Apple's tablet computer, a hacker claims to have gained root access to the iPad. "A well-known hacker of the iPhone, who previously defeated Apple's restrictions on developers, has claimed in a video to have hacked the iPad. Just a day after release, the hacker, who goes by 'MuscleNerd' online, said that he has gained root access to the iPad..."

adeelarshad82 writes "After eight years of development, remote gaming service OnLive is scheduled to roll out on June 17 for Windows and Mac. The company also announced its service pricing: users will need to pay $14.95 per month, which will allow them access to the service. However, the company did not disclose the price to rent or purchase games. 'It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games will also include new releases like Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, as well as a bunch of other titles. Perlman anticipates anywhere from a dozen to 25 titles to be available at launch time, and more after that, depending on how negotiations with other publishers proceed.'"

@VentureBeat writes "Youtube pulled the original 'Rickroll' video Wednesday night. Don't worry, after a lot of email about the loss of such an important piece of cultural history, Youtube put it back up, saying that they're never gonna say goodbye to the video that's had over 30 million views."

An anonymous reader writes "Apple is now removing many risque applications from its App Store so as not to 'scare off potential customers.' The removed applications, including SlideHer and Dirty Fingers, allowed people to see scantily clad women. Although they were once approved by Apple, even reaching the 'most downloaded' lists, Apple removed them after getting complaints that they were degrading to women. That said, the Sports Illustrated application is still available for those who want scantily clad women on their iPhone, and developers are up in arms over the perceived inconsistency. It's sure a good thing for those worried parents that they don't have any kind of web browser on there. On the internet, you're never more than one click away from something horrible." Some are speculating that this is a ploy from Apple to drum up interest in the iPad from educators.

As of last night, Amazon stopped listing all books from Macmillan Publishers, referring searches to other sellers instead. According to the New York Times, this is because Macmillan is one of the companies that now has an agreement to sell ebooks through Apple's new iBooks store, and asked Amazon to raise the price of their ebooks from $9.99 to $15. An industry source told the Times that the de-listing is Amazon's way of "expressing its strong disagreement" with the idea of a price hike. Gizmodo suggests this is the first volley in an Apple-Amazon ebook war. Quoting: "It feels like a repeat of the same s*** Universal Music, and later, NBC Universal pulled with iTunes, trying to counter the leverage Apple had because of iTunes' insane marketshare. Same situation here, really: Content provider wants more money/control over their content, fights with the overwhelmingly dominant, embedded service that's selling the content. Last time, everybody compromised and walked away mostly happy: Universal and NBC got more flexible pricing, iTunes got DRM-free music and more TV shows for its catalog to sell. ... The difference in this fight is that Macmillan is one of the publishers signed to deliver books for Apple's iBooks store. They have somewhere to run. And credibly. That wasn't really the case with record labels, who tried to fuel alternatives to dilute iTunes power, and failed."

Glyn Moody writes "Two years after its launch, Google's Linux-based Android platform is finally making its presence felt in the world of smartphones. Around 20,000 apps have been written for it. Although well behind the iPhone's tally, that's significantly more than just a few months ago. But there's a problem: few of these Android apps are free software. Instead, we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack — open source underneath, and proprietary on top. If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem. So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"

An anonymous reader tips news that Intel has canceled plans for a consumer version of their long-awaited and oft-delayed Larrabee chip, opting instead to use it as a development platform product. From VentureBeat: "'Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we had hoped to be at this point in the project,' said Nick Knuppfler, a spokesman for Intel in Santa Clara, Calif. 'Larrabee will not be a consumer product.' In other words, it’s not entirely dead. It’s mostly dead. Instead of launching the chip in the consumer market, it will make it available as a software development platform for both internal and external developers. Those developers can use it to develop software that can run in high-performance computers. But Knuppfler said that Intel will continue to work on stand-alone graphics chip designs. He said the company would have more to say about that in 2010."

eldavojohn writes "The Entertainment Software Association has released this year's fiscal report (PDF), putting out their numbers to level the finger at new targets. Following up on last year's published report, this one has a whole bunch of new numbers to ponder. The top five P2P game piracy countries this year are: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland. The ESA's anti-piracy program notes, 'Chief among this year's actions were five separate law enforcement raids against game pirates in California, resulting in the seizure of several thousand games and dozens of modded consoles, and the arrests of five individuals.' But don't worry, they've expanded to other countries. 'The ESA sent takedown notices to ISPs covering more than 45 million instances of infringement of member company games in more than 100 countries worldwide.' They also strive to show they are actually doing things, like endorsing 43 bills aimed at regulating content or controlling access to video games — with not a single one of them making it into law. They did put some into effect at the state level; mostly making it a crime to sell mature games to minors. You can also find their activities localized to you, as this report has sections arranged by state and country. Conspicuously absent this year are any global numbers of what piracy cost the entertainment industry, so unfortunately Ars Technica will have to find someone else to audit, although Venture Beat has a good breakdown."

tlhIngan writes "Physical intimidation of a Foxconn employee, 25 year-old Sun Danyong, and a possibly-illegal search of his house may have led to suicide after an iPhone prototype in his possession was lost. Foxconn is Apple's long-time manufacturing partner for the iPhone. Entrusted with 16 iPhone prototypes, Danyong discovered that one was missing and searched the factory for it. When it didn't turn up, he reported the incident to his boss, who ordered his apartment searched. There are reports of physical intimidation by Foxconn security personnel. This ended tragically on Thursday at 3 AM, when Danyong jumped from his apartment building to his death." VentureBeat notes that "Apple exerts immense pressure on its business partners [to] help it maintain secrecy." An Apple spokesperson said this to CNet: "We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death. We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect."

krou writes "The Wrap has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt on Google's new plan for news. Google is apparently planning on rolling out 'high-quality news' to users who are not actively searching for news. It's expected to launch in approximately six months' time, and the first two news organizations to be involved will be The New York Times and The Washington Post. 'Under this latest iteration of advanced search, users will be automatically served the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google's page. The latest algorithms apply ever more sophisticated filtering — based on search words, user choices, purchases, a whole host of cues — to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they're looking for it. And on this basis, Google believes it will be able to sell premium ads against premium content.' Although Schmidt said that companies like the New York Times won't get any of this ad revenue, he commented that it will push stories to users who want them, drive up traffic to those stories, and in turn bring higher advertising rates for those stories." As VentureBeat points out, Google hasn't officially confirmed any of this, and with no ad revenue going to the other companies, it only partially addresses complaints that Google is profiting unfairly from the work of news publications.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "President Barack Obama has named his chief technology officer, and the appointee is not a Silicon Valley name like so many predicted. He is Aneesh Chopra. As the Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, his job has been to 'leverage technology in government reform, promote Virginia's innovation agenda, and foster technology-related economic development with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship.' But Chopra's not a tech guy. Before he got his secretary job in 2005, he was a managing director at the Advisory Board Company, a public-market health care think tank, as well as an angel investor." O'Reilly Radar is running an article discussing why Chopra is a good choice for federal CTO.

Dutch Gun writes "Microsoft has just laid off the entire Flight Simulator development team. This continues a long-running trend of terminating or severing relationships with game development studios, such as the Bungie split, FASA, or the closure of Ensemble Studios. While one would presume that core Xbox development is not currently in jeopardy after Microsoft spent up to a billion dollars to pay for Xbox 360 repairs and salvage its reputation with gamers, does this signal a reversal from Microsoft's recent focus on internal game development? And what are its plans for Flight Simulator, a twenty-seven-year product with an extremely loyal user-base and a multitude of externally developed add-ons?"

JadedApprentice writes "Caught a mention of this startup yesterday on CNBC while they were reviewing the latest gadgets at CES. In the off chance that there was anything remotely feasible or safe about the wireless power prototypes PowerBeam had on display, I took a quick google and found this nice little write-up on the technology (along with some priceless comments for those that scroll down, and I'm not talking about those on the page below). Bottom line: while it's possibly safe, it may not be efficient and it sure as hell won't power your 1200W gaming rig, the guys at PowerBeam are hoping the convenience of wireless power delivered through directed IR lasers will not only give you the coolest living room in town, but make them very rich in the process" This may be the only one using lasers, but there's a fair gaggle of wireless power schemes on the floor at CES. Besides several chargers limited to charging the controllers of specific game consoles, I walked through a working high-concept demo put on by PowerMat (also mentioned in that PC Magazine article), which relies on dedicated per-device sleeves and dongles to power cameras, phones, and other necessary pocket-fillers; the sleeve-equipped devices then sit to charge on one of the PowerMat induction mats. That means that if your gizmo isn't one for which a sleeve or dongle is available, you're out of luck, unless it uses AA or AAA batteries (there's a charger made to fit on the mat) or can be powered by USB (for which the company has hockey-puck sized USB-power sources, which, Yes, sit on the induction mat). Impressive, but at $30 a pop, that would mean a fair outlay to convert many gadgets to use such a system.