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The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the game-playing media seems to have gotten through to the NPD group. Despite earlier statements to the contrary, it looks like for the time being they plan to continue to release console sales figures to the press at large. Next Generation reports: "NPD Group's David Riley admitted in an e-mail Monday, 'Honestly, it was terribly naive of me to think that we could simply stop providing these after giving them freely for a year ... Nothing is going to change. All will remain the same ... The 'Big Three' [Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony] are on board, so we'll be providing these figures indefinitely.'"

One NATO figure said the effect was "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik." American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast USS Kitty Hawk. By the time it surfaced, the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine had sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier. The incident caused consternation in the US Navy, which had no idea China's fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication.

eldavojohn writes "The Mozilla Foundation's chief executive now earns roughly half a million in pay and benefits. With $70 million in assets, the Foundation gave out less than $300,000 in grants to open source projects in 2006. And in 2006 85% of their $66 million in revenue came from Google. When these figures first came to light, people worried whether Firefox was becoming a pawn in Google's cold war with Microsoft. The Foundation addressed these fears and largely laid them to rest; but now the worry is that, even though it's clear that the community's code is what makes Firefox successful, Mozilla may be becoming dangerously reliant on Google's cash."

N'Gai and the LevelUp blog take on an interesting thought experiment: which is more valuable, the $60 game you bought at the store, or the save-game file sitting on your console's hard drive? The article explores the various ways save-games can be backed up, and calculates how much the average saved game is worth based on your age and income. "Our back of the envelope calculations clearly demonstrate that in all but one of the categories, the save file is more valuable than the game itself, and ought to be backed up regularly in recognition of that value. And that's without even attempting to figure out the worth of any intangibles: the frustration of having to replay familiar levels and challenges just to get back to the halfway mark; the attachment that you may have built up to the character; any customization and personalization you did the first time through; the loss of unlocks, user-generated content and other valuable elements." I have a massive save-game file for Oblivion that I would be very distraught to lose. Any saved-games you've been carting around or protecting over the months/years?

In the fourth volume of the ongoing series of interviews between Nintendo's Iwata and the Mario Galaxy team, design legend Shigeru Miyamoto puts forth the opinion that he thinks he's nailed two-player Mario. That opinion is bolstered by Japanese sales figures, which shows the plumber doing quite well for his umpteenth outing. "Miyamoto: 'For every game I worked on, there were always times when I would keep discussing the issue of two-player simultaneous gameplay, and the staff also became conscious of the challenge, so every development team kept trying hard to solve it too. Though I think that might also have been because they thought if they didn't deal with it first, I'd come in and ask how it was coming along for sure! (laughs).'" Via Kotaku.

nowhere.elysium writes "Symbian has suggested that Google is not experienced enough or capable of fully developing a workable mobile platform. Symbian's vice president, John Forsyth inferred that Google's interest in the field will also wane due to it being 'deeply unsexy', and that development is not likely for such a platform because "You have [...] a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed." In the same series of statements, Linux is likened to the common cold: "About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It's a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business.""

Newsweek's LevelUp blog has the big news of the day: the monthly releases of NPD sales information for the games industry have (for the time being) come to an end. N'Gai Croal and Geoff Keighly have a lengthy discussion about the withdrawal of that information from a reliable source. They also discuss the huge number of AAA games releasing this month, and which of those are likely to come out on top. N'Gai also notes that, as far as the NPD was concerned, we should have seen this coming. "NPD Group director David Riley contacted us with a statement to clarify his company's new position, which reads: At this time last year, it was made very clear that NPD will provide media with hardware sales figures, but that it would only be temporary. As you may recall, we never provided these numbers until Nov.'06, the first month when all three new consoles were on the market. It's been a year, so it's time to pull back. It's better to pull back and leave it up to our clients to release their numbers. Or, if manufacturers tell us it's okay to release their hardware sales numbers, then we'll go back to providing them, but that shouldn't be our call."

6031769 writes "After recently claiming that only 400 to 600 Linux users visit the BBC website, the BBC's Ashley Highfield has now admitted that they got their numbers wrong. The new estimate is between 36,600 and 97,600 according to his blog post. He stops short of describing how Auntie arrives at these two widely different sets of numbers and how their initial estimate is two orders of magnitude out."

An anonymous reader writes "We've got a winner in the Pentagon's $3.5 million all-robot street rally, the Urban Challenge. Three, actually. Wired reports that 'bots from Stanford, Virginia Tech, and Carnegie Mellon all completed the course within the six-hour time limit. The robo-cars had to complete different missions taking varying times, so the flesh-and-blood judges will take a day to figure out who takes home first prize."

MCV is reporting that a $99 version of the PlayStation 2, in a new and compact format, will be released next year. The new unit will incorporate the power supply into its housing, allowing Sony to manufacture the product very inexpensively. "The news will surely come as a blow to Sony rivals Nintendo and Microsoft, who have seen sales of PS2 suffer somewhat due to the introduction of Wii and Xbox 360 in recent years. PS2 this week celebrated its seventh anniversary, during which time it has sold over 120 million units worldwide. Yet this cut demonstrates Sony's belief that the system's market is far from exhausted. Last month, publisher bosses from the likes of Eidos, Ubisoft and Atari suggested to MCV that a price cut on the console could massively reinvigorate its sales figures."

An anonymous reader writes "Seagate has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleges that the company mislead customers by selling them hard disk drives with less capacity than the company advertised. The suit states that Seagate's use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term "gigabyte" was misleading and inaccurate: whereby 1GB = 1 billion bytes. In actuality, 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes — a difference of approximately 7% from Seagate's figures. Seagate is saying it will offer a cash refund or free backup and recovery software."

An anonymous reader writes "Supercomputers small enough to fit into the palm of your hand are only 10 or 15 years away, according to Professor Michael Zaiser, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering and Electronics. Zaiser has been researching how tiny nanowires — 1000 times thinner than a human hair — behave when manipulated. Apparently such minuscule wires behave differently under pressure, so it has up until now been impossible to arrange them in tiny microprocessors in a production environment. Zaiser says he's figured out how to make them behave uniformly. These "tamed" nanowires could go inside microprocessors that could, in turn, go inside PCs, laptops, mobile phones or even supercomputers. And the smaller the wires, the smaller the chip can be. "If things continue to go the way they have been in the past few decades, then it's 10 years... The human brain is very good at working on microprocessor problems, so I think we are close — 10 years, maybe 15," Zaiser said."

The MTV Multiplayer blog is playing host to a two-part interview with outgoing Nintendo president of marketing Perrin Kaplan. A well-respected figure in the games business, Kaplan's 'exit interview' with Stephen Totilo touches on everything from the missing September surprise to why the US doesn't have a fan club. "You know we've taken a really close look at what they're doing in Europe and what they're doing in Japan. You have to remember that, geographically, we're much bigger here and cost-wise, it is much more expensive to run a program like that. We try to do pre-sale with our retailers as often as possible. You're talking about a scale that is much larger. But we do look at the differences in markets and what consumers are liking. It's just a difference in scale." Good luck to Ms. Kaplan in her future endeavors.

alphadogg writes "The Storm worm, which some say is the world's biggest botnet despite waning in recent months, is now fighting back against security researchers that seek to destroy it and has them running scared, conference attendees in NYC heard this week. The worm can figure out which users are trying to probe its command-and-control servers, and it retaliates by launching DDoS attacks against them, shutting down their Internet access for days, says an IBM architect."

Despite the upbeat tone of IDG's official release about the first 'E for All', commentators are noting that the reported figure of 18,000 attendees is lower than expected. Wired is blunt about it: E For All has nothing on PAX. "Penny Arcade Expo was everything E For All dreams of being: a well-attended show packed wall-to-wall with crazy game fans. But it's also inexpensive: three days and two nights of musical performances for way, way less money than an E For All ticket, let alone the additional cost of Video Games Live. And it's got a whole mess of community events, like panels, gaming rooms, and other opportunities that make E For All's extracurriculars look slim. The show floor is just one part of PAX, but it's practically all of E For All."

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article on OSWeekly.com, Apple missed a big opportunity by not releasing Leopard soon. They could've taken advantage of Vista's losing streak and one upped Microsoft, the author suggests. 'It's not uncommon for Windows users and technology consumers in general to say that Microsoft missed out on making the most of Vista both before and after its launch. Longtime fans of Windows have changed their tone due to Vista's inadequacies, and regular users are in many cases stuck with trying to figure out why they still can't get certain things to work within the operating system. Granted, it's not a completely horrific OS, but is that even a compliment worth accepting?'"

Al E Usse writes "Ars Technica does a write up of the problems that were not solved by the July 1, 2007 integration ban on integrated security in your cable box. The goal was to get everyone on the same page by requiring standardized technology. Just the same, the cable companies aren't really playing ball. 'The companies who make the boxes don't seem interested in selling to consumers [and] cable companies still push their own branded devices.' The article covers some deep background on the whole CableCARD mess, and concludes with the current state of the market: 'Based on June 2007 figures from the cable industry, 271,000 CableCARDs have been deployed. That's an astonishingly low number. 58 percent of all US households with a TV subscribe to cable, according to the NCTA, which means that 65 million households have at least basic cable.'"

daevux writes "CNN is reporting that French engineer Pascal Cotte has discovered interesting details of the history of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa from a 240-megapixel scan of the artwork in various frequencies. Cotte surmises that the painted figure's eyebrows and eyelashes probably disappeared due to poor cleaning at some point in the past. He believes he can reconstruct the painting's original skin tones."

Peerless writes "Capitol v. Thomas defendant Jammie Thomas has officially appealed the RIAA's $222,000 copyright infringement award. She is seeking a retrial to determine the RIAA's actual damages, arguing that the jury's award was 'unconstitutionally excessive': 'Thomas would like to see the record companies forced to prove their actual damages due to downloading, a figure that Sony-BMG litigation head Jennifer Pariser testified that her company "had not stopped to calculate." In her motion, Thomas argues that the labels are contending that their actual damages are in the neighborhood of $20. Barring a new trial over the issue of damages, Thomas would like to see the reward knocked down three significant digits — from $222,000 to $151.20.'"

njondet writes "The Hollywood Reporter reports that TF1, the French broadcaster of the hit TV show 'Heroes' has welcomed the success of its video-on-demand (VOD) offering. The service allows French internet users to watch episodes of the second season of Heroes just 24 hours after their original US broadcast. With more than 50,000 paid viewings of the first episode in three days, it is by far the most successful VOD product in France. And although these figures still pale in comparison with the estimated 1.5 million illegal downloads per episode for the first season in France, TF1 is confident that it is building a viable alternative to piracy."