Test Test http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php Mon, 21 May 2012 02:34:23 -0400 1 Hundreds queue for Nintendo 3DS and Apple iPad 2 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1198
Launch for the Nintendo 3DS on Oxford Street

Technology fans were kitted out with foil space blankets to beat the chill outside the HMV store in Oxford Street where the first Nintendo 3DS was sold in the UK at a minute past midnight.

There were similar queues outside the Apple Store in Regent Street, London, where the iPad 2 goes on sale at 5pm on Friday. The first Apple fans arrived at 7.30am yesterday – more than 33 hours early.

At the front of the queue for an Nintendo 3DS at HMV was Marwan Elgamal, 21, from Wembley, north London.

The student, who slept on the street outside the store on Wednesday, was also the first person to officially buy a Nintendo Wii when it was launched in the same way in 2006.

He said: ''I'm just really passionate about the consoles and I think they are amazing and just make me want to play.

''Wednesday night was really cold but it will be worth it to get one and I can't wait to get home and play it.''

Comic Russ Kane and rapper turned soul crooner Plan B also attended the launch event in London.

Around 100 stores are opening at midnight including shops in Aberdeen, Belfast, Dundee and Liverpool.

The console, which has two screens, a built-in motion sensor, three cameras and can also double as a pedometer, claims to offer glasses-free 3D technology.

An HMV spokesman said: ''The release of Nintendo's 3DS is shaping up to be the biggest launch ever for a games console – we've already seen massive demand through online and in-store pre-orders in recent months, and now it looks like tens of thousands of gamers will have been queuing for midnight launches all around the country.

''Demand will, no doubt, just keep building in the months ahead – appealing to serious gamers and casual players alike. The 3DS is a groundbreaking piece of technology that will not only take gaming to the next level, but will help to lay the foundations for 3D to become a standard entertainment format – it's a real game-changer.''

Reports from Japan, where the console has already been launched, said it is able to tell if users are playing bootleg copies of games and disable itself.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk]]> Sat, 26 Mar 2011 09:43:18 -0400 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1198 <![CDATA[Mozilla's Firefox 4 bags 1M downloads in 3 hours]]> http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1197
Users of Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 will see this Firefox 4 upgrade offer after selecting "Check for updates" from the browser's Help menu.

Firefox 4 got off to a strong start today, with 1 million copies of the new browser downloaded in the first three hours.

If it keeps up the early pace, Firefox 4 will easily beat Microsoft's claim that users downloaded 2.4 million copies of its Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in the first 24 hours of availability last week.
Firefox 4 upgrade offer

Although Firefox 4's out-of-the-gate download tally was impressive, Mozilla executive Mike Beltzner said that it was behind the launch numbers of Firefox 3.6, which shipped in January 2010. During the first three hours, downloads averaged between 5,000 and 6,000 copies per minute, less than half the 12,000-per-minute pace of the previous version.

At around 9 a.m. PT Beltzner noted that it was just the start of the day on the west coast of the U.S., and noon on the east. He encouraged users to hit Mozilla's download servers.

"What better way to spend your break than by downloading Firefox 4," said Beltzner during a live Webcast hosted by Mozilla.

Mozilla has posted a real-time download calculator on its site.

When the new browser reached one million downloads, Mozilla developers and employees rang cowbells, cheered, and watched as someone dressed in a Firefox mascot costume danced around the room.

Tuesday's release marked the end of more than a year of development by Mozilla, which issued the first "alpha" edition of the browser in February 2010. Firefox 4 was originally scheduled to ship last November, but bugs and other delays forced it to announce in October that it would instead wrap up development early this year.

The code designated as final today was identical to Firefox 4 Release Candidate 2 (RC2), a last-minute update that Mozilla issued last Friday.

Mozilla's Firefox 4 was the second major upgrade shipped by browser makers in just over a week. On March 14, Microsoft launched the final version of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).

Firefox 4 features a new tab manager, dubbed "Panorama," boasts an overhauled interface that resembles Chrome's minimalist design, and supports GPU acceleration to boost page composition speeds.

Hardware acceleration has become a point of contention between Mozilla and Microsoft. The latter has touted IE9 as the only browser to "fully hardware accelerate the entire Web platform," while Mozilla has criticized its rival for abandoning Windows XP users. IE9 runs only on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Microsoft today again defended that decision.

"The developer community has been vocal that they want to push the Web forward," a Microsoft spokesman said in an e-mail. "The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on and a browser running on a ten-year-old operating system tethers the Web to the past. The time has come to stop focusing on lowest common denominator, and to really push what's possible with innovations like full hardware acceleration."

Some Mozilla developers have used stronger words to describe Microsoft's argument that IE9 is the best browser on Windows.

"Microsoft's message that IE9 is the apex of what a browser can do with the GPU is nonsense," said Robert O'Callahan, a New Zealand employee of Novell who works full time on Mozilla's graphics infrastructure. In a post to his personal blog, O'Callahan said, "Microsoft's PR about 'full hardware acceleration' is a myth."

Mozilla technology evangelist Asa Dotzler was even more blunt. "Microsoft, stop making bull**** claims about hardware acceleration," Dotzler titled a post to his personal blog two weeks ago.

Users can download Firefox 4 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from Mozilla's site.

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http://www.computerworld.com]]> Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:05:52 -0400 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1197 PS3s seized in Sony-LG patent dispute http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1196
Sony and LG are locked in a legal battle over Blu-ray technology in the PS3. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Dutch police have seized several thousand PlayStation 3s at Sony's biggest European warehouse in the latest stage of its acrimonious patent battle with LG.

LG has won a court order enabling it to seize all new PS3 across the Netherlands – including those already in Dutch homes – in a dispute that centres on Sony's allegedly infringing use of Blu-ray technology belonging to LG.

The injunction means that LG is tightening the net on PS3s in Europe, having already ordered customs officers to seize thousands of the consoles last week.

Sony will fight to have the blockade lifted at an emergency hearing in the Hague's civil court of justice tomorrow.

LG argues that Sony PS3s infringe a number of its patents relating to playback of Blu-ray discs. The Korean company has been granted an investigation into the PS3's Blu-ray use by the US international trade commission, after seeking a "permanent exclusion order ... excluding entry into the United States" of the games console.

Tomorrow's court battle will be one of the first times the Asian giants have come head to head in patent disputes stretching almost seven years.

LG is likely to apply for the consoles to be destroyed, while Sony will apply for the blockade to be lifted. A court judgment on what happens next could be returned tomorrow or in the coming days.

Customs officials at Rotterdam and Schiphol, the main import points for PS3s for both the UK and wider Europe, are understood to have extended a blockade on two Sony shipments made last week.

Sony, which imports about 100,000 PS3s into Europe each week, is attempting to get all the restrictions lifted.

If Sony is found to have infringed LG patents, it could be forced to compensate the South Korean manufacturer for each PS3 it has sold around the world, which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

A spokesman for Sony said: "Sony was notified at the end of February by customs authorities in the Netherlands that an inspection would be made into imports of [PlayStation 3s]. We believe this is due to a petition made by LG Electronics, alleging that Sony may be infringing LG patents related to Blu-ray technologies.

"However, this is only a preliminary injunction, that has resulted in shipments being temporarily withheld. It does not indicate any acceptance of LG's allegations. We consider these allegations unwarranted, and will take appropriate measures including filing a claim of opposition to courts in the Netherlands. We will not comment on any further details."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk]]> Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:16:54 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1196 Google Nukes Rogue Android Apps On Users’ Devices http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1195

Your Android phone has a built-in kill switch for nasty apps. And Google, apparently, is not afraid to use it.

Over the weekend, the search giant announced that it had remotely wiped “a number” of malicious Android apps from users’ phones, programs that earlier in the week had been identified as malware and pulled from Android’s app store. “We are remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices. This remote application removal feature is one of many security controls the Android team can use to help protect users from malicious applications,” Google wrote on its mobile blog, linking to an explanation it posted in June of a built-in functionality for deleting apps from users’ phones.

Google also wrote that it’s contacting law enforcement about the issue and updating Android devices with a fix for the exploit used by those apps–pirated copies of legitimate programs with malicious code weaved in–designed to prevent any further compromise of users’ data. The company added that “we are adding a number of measures to help prevent additional malicious applications using similar exploits from being distributed through Android Market and are working with our partners to provide the fix for the underlying security issues.”

Exactly what those “measures” might be, Google isn’t saying. A Google spokesperson I contacted declined to comment beyond the text of the company’s blog post.

But Chris Wysopal, the chief technology officer of security vulnerability analysis firm Veracode, speculates that Google is likely introducing signature-based scanning to the Android Market, a tool for identifying malware and making sure that similar instances of malicious code are blocked from the Market in the future, just as viruses are identified and blocked by signature-based scans on PCs.

“This relies on someone external to Google finding the first malware and reporting it. In this case the trojan apps were pirated so the original developers were tipped off,” Wysopal wrote to me in an email. “This is definitely an improvement, but I expect malware writers to adjust.”

The last time Google deleted applications that were already downloaded to users’ devices was in June, and its targets were two proof of concept apps built by security researcher Jon Oberheide. As I wrote at the time, that use of its kill switch seemed to be a loud warning to malware writers about the company’s ability to remotely destroy their tools. After all, Oberheide’s apps were designed to show the possibility of creating an Android-hosted botnet, not to actually create one.

But as cybercriminals increasingly look to mobile platforms as new targets, their malware is no longer a mere demonstration–and nor is Google’s ability to nuke those apps from orbit.

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http://blogs.forbes.com]]> Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:55:19 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1195 iPad 2: An underwhelming launch - and what about Steve Jobs? http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1194
Steve Jobs Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs takes the stage during an Apple iPad 2 event in San Francisco. Photograph: Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

It's not hard to read Steve Jobs' surprise appearance at Wednesday's iPad 2 unveiling as a mark of desperation. Is Apple so in need of a boost to its share price that it needed to haul Jobs out of medical leave?

The audience was thrilled that Jobs showed up: "We've been working on this product for a while, and I didn't want to miss it. Thank you for having me," he told the audience. All Things Digital's Kara Swisher said it would be so.

But was his appearance designed to distract us from an underwhelming launch? His introduction seemed to try even harder than usual to build up Apple and to knock its rivals - from ebook and app download numbers to dismissing the competition's attempts at tablets.

What were we left with after that? A faster processor, a dual-core A5 chip, that will mean it can operate twice as fast and render graphics up to nine times faster.

A front-facing camera that will allow Apple to push Facetime, but was an obvious omission from the first iPad and one that Apple, rather annoyingly deliberately held back so it had something to add this time around. A less logical rear-facing camera - who's going to use the iPad to shoot anything?

Those improvements could all have been made to the original iPad, though you can't count a black and white version as an improvement. Lighter, thinner, maybe. Is there really much incentive to buy an iPad 2?

The stats Apple revealed are more impressive, all designed as part of that share-boosting drive: 100m iPhones shipped, 200m iTunes accounts and more than $2bn paid to developers. That means Apple's revenue from apps has been $6.6bn. If the news industry doesn't revolt, and if Apple's rivals don't make too much headway on paid-for apps, Apple will be making a lot more in that direction.

But Steve Jobs' appearance undermined Apple's obligation to cultivate a new public face of Apple, apparently for the short-term benefit of a stock-price boost. Long term, that's succeeded in keeping the succession the main story.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:47:14 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1194 Google adjusts search to restrict “content farms” http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1193
It will provide better rankings for high - quality sites - sites with original content and information, says Amit Singhal. File Photo: Bijoy Ghosh

Search giant Google has adjusted its famously secretive algorithms to push so-called “content farms” further down the lists of results that users see.

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites - sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful,” said Google fellow Amit Singhal in a blog posted on Thursday night.

“At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high- quality sites - sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Analysts said the move would likely have the greatest impact on companies like Demand Media, Associated Content and Suite 101, which generally produce content that is gleaned from other sites and which is primarily designed to appear high on frequently searched-for terms. News of the changes sent shares of Demand Media tumbling early on Friday, but the company said the move had not adversely affected its status.

“As might be expected, a content library as diverse as ours saw some content go up and some go down in Google search result,” executive vice president of media and operations Larry Fitzgibbons said in a blog post.

“It’s impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term - but at this point in time, we haven’t seen a material net impact on our Content & Media business.” Singhal said the change noticeably impacts some 12 per cent of Google searches and would be introduced initially in the U.S. before rolling out internationally.

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http://www.thehindu.com]]> Sat, 26 Feb 2011 10:10:19 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1193 Can Fable 4 Redeem The Falling Franchise? http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1192
Back in the halcyon days of the original Xbox, Peter Molyneux of Lionhead studios announced an RPG title for Microsoft’s debut console. We were promised many things in Fable: We were promised a hero who would physically change based on the environment and in game events. We were promised a unique experience for every player. Molyneux even went as far as to say that “it’s gonna be the best game ever.” Some of these points were delivered, and many were not. Was this a problem with Fable as a game? Absolutely not. Though the game failed to live up to all the hype, it was still a fantastic action RPG with it own unique style and brand of humour. In fact I doubt it would be a huge stretch to claim that Fable was one of the best games made for the original Xbox.


Fable gave us some solid gaming, without the usual RPG cliches

The problem with Fable was not in the game itself but in the aggressive marketing tactics employed by our dear friend Molyneux. This isn’t intended to be a hate article against the man as, for all his faults, he’s made some excellent games in his time and is a testament to what our industry needs more of. I’m actually quite a big fan of Peter Molyneux. The fact is though, that he built up the hype of Fable to an unnecessary level that the game just could not meet, regardless of its quality. With such a ridiculous image to live up to, Fable is never given quite the respect it deserves. Its unique fantasy setting, lush soundtrack courtesy of Danny Elfman along with its addictive gameplay made it one of the better RPGs of the previous generation.

After a Fable expansion back in 2005, the franchise went into hibernation for three years while Lionhead set to work on a Fable sequel. When that sequel arrived in October 2008 it met with generally positive reviews, though some fans still felt that they didn’t get quite what was promised. Fable 2 did a great job of redefining the original Fable engine. With the power of the Xbox 360 now available to them, Lionhead were able to create a visual feast in Fable 2; yet they were also able to completely alter combat and exploration as we knew it from the original game. Combat, rather than relying on hot-keying spells and equipment, made a streamlined improvement of mapping magic, sword and ranged attacks to separate buttons. The adventure sections were also made easier to follow through the use of a golden trail you could follow to your next objective, as opposed to the usual mini-map affair we’ve become accustomed to over the years.


The power of the 360 allowed Fable 2 to push the graphical boundaries

Yet for all of these additions and improvements the game still could not match the sheer velocity of the hype train. The promises of a deep co-op gameplay experiences were entirely too optimistic, the interlaced mechanic of the hero’s canine companion didn’t revolutionise the gameplay in near the way we were promised and the game seemed to recycle many of the set pieces from the original. With some ground left to cover, the Fable franchise seemed set to go for third time lucky after a two year hiatus.

It was thus in 2010 that we were greeted with Fable 3. The game set forth with an interesting new plot mechanic that saw you becoming king of Albion and having to engage in the complex moral decisions required of your station. Yet, despite this new narrative direction, Fable 3 felt largely like an extension of its predecessor and not an entirely new experience. With the engine and graphics not getting much of an upgrade, we were left with lukewarm improvements to see us through the game. Despite some clever menu and level up work-arounds, Fable 3 wasn’t much of an improvement for the series. For what it lacked it in originality, it was still an enjoyable title though. Lionhead began to really nail storytelling with Fable 3, and the plot was more engaging than ever. The one thing that the Fable series really needs to sort out though is the moral decisions. The game constantly forces you to make decisions that alter the game world, but then it reduces the complexity of these situations by labelling the choices as “good” and “evil.” With the first two Fable games this wasn’t such an issue as, quite irritatingly, the moral decisions were fairly basic. “Would you like to save the children or eat them?” That sort of thing. With Fable 3 and its themes on Machiavellian kingship the decisions you made became more intricate and compromising, yet the good and evil points still try to force an objective morality onto the player. This almost ruined the game for me. I may be putting my best interests first, but this might be for any number of reasons. Maybe I needed more money to upgrade my equipment to save more lives later? What if I found the troubled NPC suspicious and didn’t want aid him in any misdeeds? Without being able to explain myself to the game, I find it frustrating when the game then tries to judge the decisions I make. Down with the good and evil points.


As fun as Fable 3 is, I find it hard to swallow any game that judges my morality

If there is going to be a fourth Fable game this will be the first thing that should change. Sometimes hard decisions must be made to insure the needs of the many are served, and Lionhead need to grow up a little bit and understand this before they write the next Fable. Go read some philosophy and widen the mind Molyneux. A little bit of Kant and Kierkegaard on the side and then you can get back to it. Other things the Fable franchise needs to focus on are the mood and tone. Fable had a generally light hearted and jovial overtone that complemented the game’s humour well. The previous 2 Fables have, by contrast, been more brooding. Though it’s more of a personal preference I’d rather like to see the series’ humour come through more in future and take the series back to its roots. Despite my occasional misgivings regarding Fable 2 and 3, I trust Lionhead to keep improving the series’ gameplay, to the point where I don’t really have any improvements to suggest in this department. The main thing that will help Fable 4 along the most would be a little less hype from the get go. Molyneux is a great designer but, if he spent more of his time perfecting his games and less time talking about them, we’d have better gaming experiences to take from the Fable franchise.

Until Fable 4 gets announced all we can do is speculate and hope. Though the series is still going strong it has been declining slowly since the original. Fingers crossed the fourth entry will be able to redeem the series to its former excellence if it ever sees the light of day. Are there any improvements or new features you’d like to see in future Fable games? Please shout out in the comments section below.

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http://www.gamingbolt.com]]> Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:10:52 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1192 Samsung unveils ‘bada’ smartphone in Korea http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1191
A model holds up Samsung’s new Wave II smartphone with its company’s own “bada” mobile platform. Provided by the company

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker, said yesterday that it will launch the “Wave 2” smartphone in the domestic market this week, finally introducing the company’s own proprietary “bada” mobile platform on its home turf.

The Wave 2 phone, the latest model in Samsung’s Wave series powered by the company’s own mobile software, will be released at a price of 700,000 won ($629) this week, Samsung said in a statement, cheaper than its high-end flagship model, the Galaxy S, which is priced at 900,000 won.

The 3.7-inch smartphone features “Social Hub,” which integrates social networking services, email, contacts and schedules in one place, and “Samsung Apps,” the phone maker’s own mobile application store, it said.

Samsung announced the bada platform one year ago to strengthen its competitive edge in mobile software amid steep competition from the likes of Apple Inc. and other smartphone leaders.

But it has not introduced the bada phone on its home ground until this month as its Android-running smartphone Galaxy S proved popular in the local market, helping the phone giant compete with Apple’s iPhone in Korea.

Shin Jong-kyun, the company’s president of the mobile phone business, said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency last month that Samsung aims to sell 10 million units of bada phones by the end of June.

Samsung, which also makes smartphones that operate using Google Inc.’s Android and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile software, is slated to announce its latest generation of high-end smartphones powered by Android later this month.

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http://joongangdaily.joins.com]]> Sun, 06 Feb 2011 14:21:59 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1191 Man Killed At Monster Hunter Stamp Rally http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1190

Last Sunday at around midday, 34-year-old Fumiaki Kuranouchi and his friend went to a Monster Hunter "stamp rally" in Tokyo. Before leaving, they rode a roller coaster called the "Spinning Coaster Maihime". Sadly, the ride cost Kuranouchi his life.

The tragedy took place on Sunday, January 30, which incidentally was the last day of a promotional "stamp rally" for Monster Hunter at Tokyo Dome City, where the roller coaster is located. Besides Monster Hunter stamps, there was also a shop with food and goodies inspired by the popular PSP games.

According to The Mainichi Daily News, the attraction Kuranouchi rode seats four passengers (two back-to-back) and takes tight turns as it spins through a 1,000 foot-long track, reaching speeds of 22mph. The embedded video shows the attraction in action.



"We were worried that we might not be allowed to ride the roller coaster as both of us are big," Kuranouchi's friend, who was riding next to the victim, told investigators. Kuranouchi's friend reportedly said that they were thinking of only getting their Monster Hunter stamps and going home if they could not ride the Spinning Coaster Maihime due to their size. Both were, however, allowed on the ride.

Kuranouchi's friend reportedly said that they were thinking of only getting their Monster Hunter stamps and going home if they could not ride the Spinning Coaster Maihime due to their size.


Six-feet-tall and weighing in at over 285 pounds, Kuranouchi was a large man, and there are unconfirmed claims in the Japanese media that the safety bar could not close due to his size. The part-time worker manning the ride apparently told police that she didn't do a hand-check for Kuarnouchi's safety bar, because it "appeared to be locked as it was positioned right on his stomach."

Soon after the ride began, Kuranouchi was thrown from the coaster, falling over twenty feet to the concrete below. He died two hours later at the hospital.

The police have since raided the offices of the theme park and the company responsible for importing the machine, on the suspicion of professional negligence leading to death, reports Kyodo News. Sources say that the park's training manual does not clearly depict how to confirm that the safety bars are locked in place. The park, however, stated that it "verbally" tells staff to check with their hands to see if the safety bar is in place.


This isn't the first tragedy Japanese theme parks have suffered. In 2007, the six-car Fujin Raijin II attraction at Osaka's Expoland derailed, killing a 19-year-old female who hit her head on the guardrail. Nineteen other passengers were also injured. The theme park, which was built for the 1970s World Expo in Osaka, closed temporarily, but later reopened. It finally closed for good in 2009. Police later determined that the cause of the accident was a cracked axle. The attraction's axle hadn't been replaced for 15 years.

The Nikkei, Japan's equivalent to the Wall Street Journal, is reporting that this incident could hurt the earnings of Tokyo Dome City. Good.

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http://www.kotaku.com]]> Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:43:44 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1190 These Facebook Games Are Bigger Than You Think http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1189

If you've ever felt like comparing how much money a "traditional" video game makes as opposed to how much a Facebook game makes, check out this chart. It makes for interesting/depressing reading.

Put together by game site IGN, it's very important to note that this isn't hard science. Much of the information depicted is not given out in detail by these publishers, so some of the figures — like the exact revenue for the Facebook games — are put together from market research data.

This means that while the chart will be in the right ballpark as far as these games are concerned, don't go splitting hairs (or putting much stock in the player bases, since one requires a $50 purchase and the other often requires absolutely nothing).



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http://www.kotaku.com]]> Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:39:39 -0500 http://www.1stsamurai.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1189