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Top news on 27 September 2009 |
Console Makers Worry Over Apple's Growing Competition
The NY Times is running a story about the effect Apple is having on the console gaming market, making Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo worry that consumers will be satisfied playing games on devices that aren't necessarily focused on gaming. Quoting: "The concerns highlight an accelerating shift away from hard-core games, which have traditionally driven console sales, to more casual ones played on cellphones. Of the 758 new game titles shown at the Tokyo Game Show, 168 were for cellphone platforms — more than twice as many as in the previous year. ... Apple's assault could even eat into sales of home consoles like Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3 or Microsoft's XBox, as game-playing quickly becomes centered on cellphones. Many in the industry say that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft need to explore more radical changes to their businesses, including an emphasis on software rather than hardware and a better way for users to download games. 'As a platform, the cellphone has the biggest potential, because everybody owns one,' said Kazumi Kitaue, chief executive at another game maker, Konami Digital Entertainment. A family with three children might buy just one Wii or PlayStation to share, but those children will probably have cellphones of their own and download and play games, Mr. Kitaue said."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
UK Musicians Back Watered-Down "Three-Strikes" Rule
A brace of anonymous readers sent along coverage of UK musicians who have turned around to support three strikes, or a milder variant of it. What they suggest is more like "three strikes and you're hobbled" — after a third offense a downloader would be not disconnected, but rate-limited. The artists involved include Lily Allen, George Michael, and Sandie Shaw. The Guardian has more details. The final quote from the music industry, striking out at UK ISPs, is priceless: "BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading. That's not only unfair to artists and creators, but penalizes BT's many customers who use the Internet legally."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New Motorcycle World Speed Record, 367.382 mph
An anonymous reader, apparently a member of the BUB racing team, wrote to let us know that on Thursday, their crew set the new ultimate motorcycle world speed record at 367.382 mph with the BUB Seven Streamliner at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The Seven is powered by a 3 Liter, turbocharged, 16-valve V4 engine that produces a claimed 500 hp and 400 lb-ft of torque at 8500 rpm. The pilot, Chris Carr, hit 380 mph during the run.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bank Goofs, and Judge Orders Gmail Account Nuked
An anonymous reader writes "The Rocky Mountain Bank, based in Wyoming, accidentally sent confidential financial information to the wrong Gmail account. When Google refused to identify the innocent account owner's information, citing its privacy policy, the bank filed in Federal court to have the account deactivated and the user's information revealed. District Judge James Ware granted the bank's request, with the result that the user has had his email access cut off without any wrongdoing or knowledge of why." The Reg's earlier story says, "Rocky Mountain Bank had asked to court to keep its suit under seal, hoping to avoid panic among its customers and a 'surge of inquiry.' But obviously, this wasn't successful."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
G20 Protesters Blasted By "Sound Cannon"
aaandre sends word of the use of a "sound cannon" on G20 protesters in Pittsburgh. Only a few hundred protesters took to the streets. The NY Times notes: "City officials said they believed it was the first time the sound cannon had been used publicly." The device projects a narrow beam of extremely annoying sound, at levels that can reach 151 decibels, over a distance of a mile or more. The Guardian notes, "It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms." Officials of the company that manufactures the sound cannon say that ear damage is only possible if someone manages to stand directly in front of the device for an extended period.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A New Explanation For the Plight of Winter Babies
Ant passes along a Wall Street Journal report on research that turned up a new explanation for the lifelong challenges experienced by winter babies. "Children born in the winter months already have a few strikes against them. Study after study has shown that they test poorly, don't get as far in school, earn less, are less healthy, and don't live as long as children born at other times of year. Researchers have spent years documenting the effect and trying to understand it... A key assumption of much of that research is that the backgrounds of children born in the winter are the same as the backgrounds of children born at other times of the year. ... [Economist] Mr. Hungerman was doing research on sibling behavior when he noticed that children in the same families tend to be born at the same time of year. Meanwhile, Ms. Buckles was examining the economic factors that lead to multiple births, and coming across what looked like a relationship between mothers' education levels and when children were born." Here's a chart in which the effect — small but significant — jumps out unmistakeably.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The First Geek Wedding At a LinuxFest
At the Ohio LinuxFest yesterday, two Linux geeks were married — or had their projects merged into a single trunk, as the officiant, Lord Drachenblut, put it. The wedding of Randy Noseworthy (proprietor of the Juiced Penguin) and Janet Edmonson was announced last week and was live-tweeted by at least one attendee — here's his photo of the happy couple. There's also a video of the ceremony, at which Jon "Maddog" Hall offered a blessing via pre-recorded audio. Update: 09/26 20:03 GMT by KD : In the comments, anyaristow notes that this wasn't the first such wedding; Rob Landly and Fade were married at Penguicon in 2007, with Steve Jackson officiating and Eric Raymond as best man.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Theora 1.1 (Thusnelda) Is Released
SD-Arcadia writes to tell us that Theora 1.1 has officially been released. It features improved encoding, providing better video quality for a given file size, a faster decoder, bitrate controls to help with streaming, and two-pass encoding. "The new rate control module hits its target much more accurately and obeys strict buffer constraints, including dropping frames if necessary. The latter is needed to enable live streaming without disconnecting users or pausing to buffer during sudden motion. Obeying these constraints can yield substantially worse quality than the 1.0 encoder, whose rate control did not obey any such constraints, and often landed only in the vague neighborhood of the desired rate target. The new --soft-target option can relax a few of these constraints, but the new two-pass rate control mode gives quality approaching full 'constant quality' mode with a predictable output size. This should be the preferred encoding method when not doing live streaming. Two-pass may also be used with finite buffer constraints, for non-live streaming." A detailed writeup on the new release has been posted at Mozilla.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AT&T Calls Google a Hypocrite On Net Neutrality
NotBornYesterday writes "AT&T is accusing Google of being a hypocrite when it comes to Net neutrality because it blocks certain phone calls on its Google Voice service. 'By openly flaunting the call-blocking prohibition that applies to its competitors, Google is acting in a manner inconsistent with the spirit, if not the letter, of the FCC's fourth principle contained in its Internet Policy Statement,' Robert Quinn, AT&T's senior vice president focusing on federal regulation, said in a statement. Google blocks certain calls to avoid high costs due to a practice known as traffic pumping. Rural carriers can charge connection fees that are about 100 times higher than the rates that large local phone companies can charge. In traffic pumping, they share this revenue with adult chat services, conference-calling centers, party lines, and others that are able to attract lots of incoming phone calls to their networks. Google responded by saying that the rules AT&T refers to don't apply to Google Voice for several reasons. Google Voice is a software application that offers a service on top of the existing telco infrastructure, it is a free service, and it is not intended to be a replacement for traditional telephone service. In fact, the service requires that users have a landline phone or a wireless phone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SpaceX Announces Dragon As First Falcon 9 Payload
BJ_Covert_Action writes "SpaceX announced recently that it would be integrating a stripped-down test version of its own Dragon cargo capsule as the payload for its first Falcon 9 test launch. The Falcon 9 rocket is currently scheduled to launch on November 29 of this year if everything goes according to plan. However, Elon Musk admits that launch day will likely slip to sometime early next year. The Falcon 9 is the heavy launch vehicle designed by SpaceX to be used as a cheap, commercial alternative to existing United States launch platforms. Having launched a few successful light missions with the Falcon 1 rocket, SpaceX is going to launch the Falcon 9 as its next milestone in commercializing the space industry. Utilizing its own cargo capsule as the first Falcon 9 payload will effectively give SpaceX double the tests for one launch slot on the Cape Canaveral range. The capsule that will be used is a test version of the full Dragon capsule that encompasses primarily the structure and a few components of the full version. It served originally as a ground test platform for the Dragon design team and now will double as an orbital testbed. If nothing else, the announcement upped the ante in the commercial space market by showing the SpaceX is capable and willing to push the envelope on its development schedules. It should serve as a proper motivator for other commercial competitors such as Orbital Sciences with their Cygnus capsule, which is also under development."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
$529M Gov't Loan To Develop $89,000 Hybrid Sports Car
theodp writes "The WSJ reports that a tiny car company backed by former VP Al Gore has just gotten a $529M US government loan to help build an $89,000 hybrid sports car in Finland. The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive follows an earlier $465M government loan to Tesla Motors, purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Fisker's other investors (PDF) include the Al Gharaffa Investment Co., a Cayman Islands corporation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MMS Arrives For the iPhone — Will It Crash AT&T's Network?
itwbennett writes "AT&T has said it is already seeing 'record traffic during peak hours of the night' with just the users selected for testing, and so it is 'very nervous' about the spike in traffic that it expects will occur after it launched MMS service for iPhones on Friday. Of course, setting records for MMS traffic isn't that great a feat considering that 'the service in question has been out for years on other handsets and hasn't exactly taken the mobile world by storm. In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.' However, the carrier's fears in one respect may have been justified, says ABI analyst Dan Shey: 'Interoperability between carriers has always been an issue, and that's why MMS usage hasn't really taken off.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Barks Back At Microsoft Over Chrome Frame Security
CWmike writes "Google hit back at Microsoft on Friday, defending the security of its new Chrome Frame plug-in and claiming that the software actually makes Internet Explorer safer and more secure. 'Accessing sites using Google Chrome Frame brings Google Chrome's security features to Internet Explorer users,' said a Google spokesman today. 'It provides strong phishing and malware protection, absent in IE6, robust sandboxing technology [in IE6 and on Windows XP], and defenses from emerging online threats that are available in days rather than months.' On Thursday, Microsoft warned users that they would double their security problems by using Chrome Frame, the plug-in that provides better JavaScript performance and adds support for HTML 5 to Microsoft's browser."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ants Vs. Worms — Computer Security Mimics Nature
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Help Net Security: "In the never-ending battle to protect computer networks from intruders, security experts are deploying a new defense modeled after one of nature's hardiest creatures — the ant. Unlike traditional security devices, which are static, these 'digital ants' wander through computer networks looking for threats ... When a digital ant detects a threat, it doesn't take long for an army of ants to converge at that location, drawing the attention of human operators who step in to investigate. 'Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat,' [says Wake Forest Professor of Computer Science Errin Fulp.] 'As they move about the network, they leave digital trails modeled after the scent trails ants in nature use to guide other ants. Each time a digital ant identifies some evidence, it is programmed to leave behind a stronger scent. Stronger scent trails attract more ants, producing the swarm that marks a potential computer infection.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Legal Group Says Unlimited Broadband Promotes Piracy
bennyboy64 writes "Unlimited broadband plans are all too familiar in many countries; in Australia they're scarce. One ISP offering such a plan between the hours of 8pm and 8am, AAPT, is being looked at as a matter of high interest by a legal group representing the interests of the global film industry, AFACT (the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft). It said AAPT was encouraging users to download copyrighted material. AAPT's advertising states: 'If you want unlimited music, unlimited games and unlimited movies — get unlimited off-peak broadband downloads from AAPT.' AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said: 'In the context of the AAPT promotion, we have a concern that it could be misconstrued to promote illegal downloads and that's something that we'd like clarified.' AFACT is currently involved in what will be a landmark court case with Australian ISP iiNet. It recently claimed in court proceedings that there was a link between iiNet upgrading the service plans of heavy Internet users and the proliferation of film piracy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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