General Gaming Article |
- DMCA Exemption for Jailbreaking Set to Expire, EFF Needs Your Help
- Rumor: Quad-Core Samsung Galaxy S III to Hit Store Shelves in April
- HP Begins Releasing webOS Source Code
- Motorola Sues Apple Over iPhone 4S, iCloud
- Symantec Investigates Stolen Source Code, Recommends Disabling pcAnywhere
- Future Tense: 3DTV Redux
- Nokia Lumia 900 Reportedly Shipping March 18, Aggressively Priced at $100
- BlizzCon Benched in 2012, Will Return to Action in 2013
- WikiLeaks Founder Promises "Controversial Voices" On Upcoming TV Series
- How to Sideload Android Apps
| DMCA Exemption for Jailbreaking Set to Expire, EFF Needs Your Help Posted: 25 Jan 2012 07:51 PM PST
The DMCA technically states that bypassing any kind of encryption of copy protection is illegal, but the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress periodically reviews things and allows exceptions as it did in 2010. If the ruling is not renewed, jailbreaking and rooting will again become a shady underground activity, and could be suppressed by manufacturers. The EFF is asking people to submit statements in support of the exemption before it's too late. In addition to renewing the smartphone/tablet rules, the EFF is seeking to have video game consoles added to the list of exempted devices. We all remember the case against noted modder GeoHot brought by Sony after he successfully jailbroke the PS3. Are you going to go out on a limb and support the DMCA exemption? |
| Rumor: Quad-Core Samsung Galaxy S III to Hit Store Shelves in April Posted: 25 Jan 2012 04:21 PM PST
To further build on those expectations, we now have a fresh rumor that hints at a Mobile World Congress (MWC) unveiling for the S III (or whatever it will be called). This rumor comes to us all the way from Russia. Eldar Murtazin, a Russian tech blogger known for being well connected, has tweeted about the S III having HD resolution, 12MP camera, software tweaks and Android 4.0. He also claimed that the device has a 1.5-1.6GHz quad-core processor. If he is to be believed -- a difficult thing considering his track record, then the Galaxy S III will be unveiled next month at MWC in Barcelona, with the device making its commercial debut in April. As far as the specs are concerned, there is nothing that we haven't heard before. As for the MWC launch, most people would probably say the same if they had to make an educated guess. But since nothing has been confirmed as yet, we would advise you to take it with a grain of salt. Image Credit: Concept-Phones.com |
| HP Begins Releasing webOS Source Code Posted: 25 Jan 2012 02:49 PM PST
The version of Enyo released is actually the new 2.0 build. This version is browser independent, allowing developers more freedom in application design. Enyo 1.0 was tied to WebKit. The PC maker plans to apply th Apache 2.0 license to the source code later this month. Next month HP hopes to get The JavaScript core of webOS out, and a standard Linux kernel for webOS in March. Switching to a standard Linux kernel like Android uses will expand device compatibility down the line. The core apps and system manager will be out sometime this summer, culminating with the final Open webOS 1.0 release around September. HP also says it is still looking at all existing webOS devices to see if updates are feasible. The TouchPad seems sure to live on, but perhaps even Pre, Pixi, and Veer owners have a shot. What do you see in Open webOS' future? |
| Motorola Sues Apple Over iPhone 4S, iCloud Posted: 25 Jan 2012 02:35 PM PST
The patents cover various bits of cellular technology, including hidden antenna design, data filtering, and "pager status" sync. The last technology, related to cellular radios, has been at the center of Motorola's German infringement suit. This patent is seen as very strong, and has been upheld in the German case. Motorola also successfully defended itself in the ITC from a recent Apple lawsuit. Motorola could be looking to make a quick buck while the Google acquisition continues to worm its way through regulatory agencies. In the not too distant future, it might be Google and Apple themselves at war as the Motorola proxy is absorbed by Google. |
| Symantec Investigates Stolen Source Code, Recommends Disabling pcAnywhere Posted: 25 Jan 2012 12:19 PM PST
In a white paper (PDF) published today, Symantec indicated that users of pcAnywhere are at increased risk, and the risk goes up for customers not following general security best practices. "General security best practices include endpoint, network, remote access, and physical security, as well as configuring pcAnywhere in a way that minimizes potential risks," Symantec stated in its white paper. "At this time, Symantec recommends disabling the product until Symantec releases a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks. For customers that require pcAnywhere for business critical purposes, it is recommended that customers understand the current risks, ensure pcAnywhere 12.5 is installed, apply all relevant patches as they are released, and follow the general security best practices discussed herein." H.D. Moore, chief architect of Metaspolit, a platform that helps IT professionals identify security issues, told Reuters that it's "pretty much unheard of to just say 'Stop using it.' Especially a vendor as large as Symantec." Be that as it may, the temporary halt Symantec recommends is a temporary measure until it can roll out a patch, presumably soon. |
| Posted: 25 Jan 2012 12:15 PM PST I saw my first 3D movie in 1953. It was House Of Wax, starring Vincent Price, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, and featured a pretty scary newcomer named Charles Bronson. It was directed by Andre de Toth, who ironically only had one good eye. To this day, it remains one of my favorite 3D movies, and I wish Warner Bros. would get off their butts and release it on 3D Blu-Ray, perhaps a double set with Phantom Of The Rue Morgue, starring Karl Malden. I'd also like Universal to release a box set of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, Revenge Of The Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us (not in 3D) and It Came From Outer Space. There are a lot of other classic films made in 3D that deserve to be released on Blu-Ray: Kiss Me Kate, Dial M For Murder (directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milland), Money From Home (Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis), The French Line (Jane Russell), Miss Sadie Thompson (Rita Hayworth, Jose Ferrer), and more. Most of the negatives still survive and a set of good Blu-Ray transfers would find a home on the shelves of many 3D enthusiasts. A lot of the 3D films made in the fifties were pretty miserable, nothing more than hasty exploitation efforts, but there are still some that have earned a place in history as an important artifact of the time. I'd include Cat Women Of The Moon and Robot Monster on that list—particularly Robot Monster which is arguably one of the worst movies ever made, but its 3D was some of the best. Go figure. Over a year ago, I wrote in this space that 3D TV is inevitable in the home theater market. I still feel that way, and I'll explain why—
But first let me acknowledge the inevitable complaints that are going to show up in the comment thread. "I can't see 3D" "It's a gimmick" "It's just another way for the big corporations to loot my wallet" "It's a fad" "I don't like it" "It's too expensive" "It doesn't work well" "It gives me a headache" "I don't like the goofy glasses" and "I don't want to be bothered." "The technology isn't perfect yet." These complaints show up in every comment thread about 3D TV and they will probably show up here as well. I'm not dismissing the complaints. They are real for the people who are complaining. Nevertheless, many people do like 3D TV and despite many justifiable objections and concerns, 3D TV is inevitable. First of all, any TV with a refresh rate of 120hz is 3D capable. You might not buy a TV for its 3D capability, but all the high-end sets now have refresh rates of 120hz or 240hz. Some manufacturers are even flirting with 480hz. Plasma sets have 600hz refresh rates. It costs little for the manufacturer to add an emitter and advertise the set as 3D ready. You might not want a 3D set, but when you buy your next big screen TV, the top of the line models will all be 3D capable, and that feature is steadily working its way down the product line, with more and more sets having that capability every year. There are two kinds of 3D TVs, passive and active. Passive sets use circular polarized glasses, the same kind you'd use for a Real-3D presentation. But such sets interleave the scan lines, so odd-numbered scan lines go to one eye and even-numbered scan lines go to the other. On a 1080P set, you're only getting 540 scan lines to each eye, half the hi-def resolution. Some people can see the scan lines, others sit far enough back and don't notice them. More common are sets that use active-shutter glasses. These glasses are a little heavier and need to be recharged every 70 hours. The TV alternates left and right eye images and the glasses are synchronized by an RF or infra-red emitter, so each eye sees the correct eye image at 60 frames per second. There is some light loss in both systems, but not significant, and you can always pump up the brightness. Polarized sets are less prone to ghosting or double-images. Active shutter sets have greater resolution. A justifiable concern for any 3D fan is that source material remains limited and some of it just isn't worth the effort. And some of the travelogues have artifacts where the depth effect gets confused if there is fast sideways motion. I suspect it has something to do with the way the image is encoded and delivered. I also expect that this will eventually be resolved as the technology continues to improve. Most 3D Blu-Ray movies look good on a home screen, several have been spectacular. DirecTV has five 3D channels. They repeat a lot of the material, but they're also increasing the variety every month. DirecTV has also been showing 3D movies on a pay-per-view channel. So if you're a 3D enthusiast, you do have an increasing menu of films to watch, with more being released every month. If you're going to get a new set—3D or not—get the biggest screen you can afford, especially if you want a theatrical experience. The bigger your screen, the more dramatic the effect—especially for 3D. 1080p 3D projectors are also becoming affordable and would allow you to fill a whole wall. So far, these are all active-shutter. (There are companies that will set up two projectors in sync so you can use polarized glasses too.) Right now, 3D TV is mostly in the homes of early adopters and enthusiasts. Given the state of the economy, it's likely to remain that way for another year or two, maybe even longer. But that gives manufacturers an opportunity to continue improving the technology and studios to expand the number of available films in release. The big studios have recognized that having a 3D release of a film can add as much as 40% to the box office gross. A 3D film is kind of like going on a dark ride at an amusement park, it has an "event" quality. So most of the major pictures planned the summer season and the holiday season will have a 3D release. Remember, the studios, the theaters, and the TV manufacturers have invested billions into 3D technology. The box office numbers justify continuing that investment for the theaters. It's going to take a lot longer for the home market to catch up because the operative equation is always the availability of content and the availability of hardware on which to view the content, but as more and more event films have 3D releases on Blu-Ray, as more and more Blu-Ray players and sets arrive in homes, 3D capability will continue to spread.
As long as 3D requires "the goofy glasses" it will exist in its own kind of specialty niche—the same way laserdiscs existed in the eighties. The laserdisc never became mainstream, but it had a strong enough customer base to justify a large library of releases. 3D TV that requires glasses will never replace HDTV as we have it today. But having a set with 3D capability will make it more likely that you will watch "event television" and selected movies in 3D. Titanic and Star Wars are being re-released in 3D. The next Star Trek movie is (allegedly) planned for 3D. Those audiences will turn out and they will very likely buy the 3D discs for their home libraries as well. Someday the Super Bowl or the Rose Parade will be broadcast in 3D and you can bet a lot of people will pull out their 3D glasses for that. Perhaps hit shows like Glee or Big Bang Theory or Hawaii Five-O will someday shoot special episodes in 3D and fans of those shows will turn on their 3D channels just for that. After nearly eight years of success in the theaters and with a growing number of 3D films released every year, and many more scheduled, I think it's fair to say that 3D has found its audience and become a mainstream format in its own right. I expect that the same audience that loves 3D movies will also embrace 3D for the home-theater experience. It's just going to take a while. What do you think? |
| Nokia Lumia 900 Reportedly Shipping March 18, Aggressively Priced at $100 Posted: 25 Jan 2012 11:52 AM PST
Boy Genius Report first broke news of the release date and $100 price tag after supposedly receiving a portion of AT&T's 2012 roadmap from what it considers a "trusted source." Those seem to be a dime a dozen on the Web these days, but its information was corroborated by CNet, which is reporting the same information, which it obtained from "sources with knowledge of the launch." This could be a big deal for Microsoft and the Windows Phone platform. Nokia's Lumia 900 is arguably the first WP device to really get excited about. It has a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED screen, 16GB of internal storage, 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, 4G LTE, and a first-class 8MP camera with Carl-freaking-Zeiss optics, all of which will come wrapped in Windows Phone 7.5. At only $100, and perhaps even less on sites like WireFly, this could be the shot-in-the-arm Microsoft needs to push its mobile OS further into the mainstream. Image Credit: Nokia via CNet |
| BlizzCon Benched in 2012, Will Return to Action in 2013 Posted: 25 Jan 2012 11:35 AM PST
The cancellation of BlizzCon was really just a footnote to Blizzard's announcement of the 2012 Battle.net World Championship. It's slated to take place in Asia toward the end of 2012 and will host this year's StarCarft II and World of Warcraft Arena World Championship tournaments, Blizzard said in a blog post on Battle.net. Specific dates and locations will be revealed in the coming months. While fans of BlizzCon will understandably be bummed about the no-show in 2012, if it means Diablo III will finally see the light of day, then perhaps it's well worth it. It's fair to say Diablo III is one of the more anticipated titles of 2012, which will ship when Blizzard is good and ready. |
| WikiLeaks Founder Promises "Controversial Voices" On Upcoming TV Series Posted: 25 Jan 2012 11:31 AM PST
"(As) a pioneer for a more just world and a victim of political repression… Assange will draw together controversial voices from across the political spectrum - iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders - each to offer a window on the world tomorrow and their ideas on how to secure a brighter future," the announcement crows. WikiLeaks is (somewhat ironically) keeping mum about the finer details of the show for now: there's no word on who's making the show or which channels will air it. However, each episode is slated to be a half-hour long, and WikiLeaks claims that "Initial licensing commitments cover over 600 million viewers across cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks." Will you be tuning in? |
| Posted: 25 Jan 2012 11:22 AM PST You've found that hot new app on the Android Market, and you can't wait to click the Install button. But you're getting the message that the app isn't compatible with your device. Being the good Maximum user that you are, you'd rather find out for yourself. Those messages are sometimes wrong, after all. Or perhaps you want to take advantage of the daily giveaways in the Amazon Appstore. Or, if you're one of the millions of Kindle Fire owners, you may want more choices than the limited Amazon Appstore provides. All of the above comprise sufficient reason to start sideloading apps to your Android device. Step 1: Get Some Apps to SideloadThe reason you sideload apps in the first place is because you're sourcing them from a place other than the sanctioned method, which is usually the Android Market or some device-specific boutique app store. Android Apps come in the form of .apk files. You can procure such files from a prior device backup, straight from a developer's website, and of course from… the Internet (you know the deal).
Next, transfer those .apk files from your PC to your Android however you like: on a microSD card (image above), through a cloud service such as Dropbox, via a USB transfer, etc. Just remember what directory those files end up in, so you don't have to root through too many folders looking for them later. Step 2: Tweak Applications SettingsThe default setting in Android is to not allow the installation of non-Market applications. Fie on that! Go to your Android device's Settings, and under Applications, check the "Unknown sources" box (image below), allowing you, in effect, to sideload. Some unfortunate souls may have tyrannical devices that have modded the Android OS to not allow sideloading at all, in which case they'll have to look into rooting the device or installing custom Android ROMs. But that's a whole other How To.
Step 3: Install the Apps Through a File ManagerTo install your .apk apps, you essentially launch the files through a file manager app. Many Android devices come with a file manager preloaded. For the rest, there are tons of file managers out there and a good handful of high-quality free ones. If you have access to the Android Market, like most Android users, we like Metago's Astro File Manager or Rhythm Software's File Manager HD for Honeycomb tablets. For folks locked into the Amazon Appstore (users of the Grid10, Kindle Fire, etc.), we prefer ES File Explorer.
Because you heeded our warning to remember what folder your .apk's are in, you just need to launch your file manager and find them (image above). If they're on a microSD card, you'll probably need to hit the file manager's Up button a couple of times to find the "Removable" directory. Touching an .apk icon will open the Package Installer, where you can touch the Install button to finish the deed (image below). Now that app, whether it will function properly or not, is ready to launch. Enjoy the sweet freedom of the gray market!
@MaxTechMarkkus for relevant chirpings. |
Back in 2010, the Library of Congress issued a rulemaking statement that exempted jailbreaking, rooting, and otherwise unlocking mobile devices from DMCA anti-circumvention laws. For all intents and purposes, this made these activities completely legal, and stopped Apple from making all those threats against the jailbreak community. In 2012, that exemption is set to expire unless it is renewed, and 
Millions of smartphone users around the globe swear by Samsung's Galaxy line, with the original Galaxy S and it's dual-core successor Galaxy S II boasting combined lifetime sales of over 30 million units. Considering the fact that the S II made its international debut around nine months back and its U.S. debut as recently as late September, there does not seem to be a very strong case for a successor at this time. However, Samsung is widely expected to unveil the next phone in its flagship smartphone family in the near future, something that makes sense given the launch history of the Galaxy series.
True to its word, HP has officially started releasing the webOS source code. The company said late last year that it would open source the mostly-failed platform so the community could continue to work on it. HP itself has pledged to continue contributing to the project as well. Today's release included the Enyo application framework, and the rest of the platform will be released over the coming months, with a few surprises along the way.
Motorola 
Less than three weeks ago, security firm Symantec 
It's not unusual for a high-end smartphone to command $300 on a subsidized contract, and there are certainly a great number of powerful devices priced at $200. Word on the Web is that Nokia's upcoming Lumia 900 smartphone will run just $100 at AT&T with a two-year service agreement, and if that's true, kudos are in order for both Nokia and AT&T for such an aggressive launch.
We have some bad news to relay to raucous gamers who were looking forward to running wild at BlizzCon this year. Blizzard Entertainment today announced there will be no BlizzCon 2012 because it's so "heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players' hands as soon as possible." BlizzCon will, however, return in 2013.
Love it or hate it, you have to admit one thing about WikiLeaks: trying to read hundreds of thousands of leaked documents can sure put a strain on your peepers. Leak lovers won't have to battle eye strain for too much longer, however. WikiLeaks recently announced that Julian Assange, the controversial man behind the controversial site, will host a ten episode TV show about "The world tomorrow" starting in March. 
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