General Gaming Article |
- Universal Music Says It Can Pull Content It Doesn't Own From YouTube
- SOPA Vote Delayed Without Explanation
- Sprint Kills Carrier IQ On Its Phones
- Head to Head: Spotify vs. Rdio
- Cool Site of the Week: IPChicken.com
- Square Enix Hacked, Data For 1.8 Million Users Possibly Breached
- Security Firm Claims Google Is Conspiring To Kill Off Firefox
- Zynga Shares Drop Below IPO Target in Nasdaq Debut
- AMD Radeon HD 7970 Specs Leaked to the Web
- Next Generation Xbox Console Won't Ship in 2012
| Universal Music Says It Can Pull Content It Doesn't Own From YouTube Posted: 16 Dec 2011 02:26 PM PST
The 18-page filing says not a thing about the MegaUpload video actually infringing on anything. Rather, UAG asserts that it has the right, through the YouTube content management system, to pull anything it wants. Anything. The content management system was developed by Google to placate content owners, but it appears they might have been given too much power. We will have to wait a few days to see how the judge responds to the new filing. If taken at face value, though, it seems to indicate UAG was not technically justified in removing the video in the first place. That could put MegaUpload in a favorable position legally. The video remains up, but apparently UAG could take it down at any time with its YouTube superpowers. |
| SOPA Vote Delayed Without Explanation Posted: 16 Dec 2011 01:48 PM PST
SOPA would force ISPs to block sites suspected of containing content that infringes copyright. Experts on network management and internet infrastructure have repeatedly expressed concern over the measure, but the entertainment lobby is pushing hard for its passage. Sites targeted by the law would have virtually no ability to fight the seizure of their domain names. SOPA (and the companion Senate legislation Protect IP) also ends safe harbor provisions that protect websites from being held liable for content uploaded by users. There was no date set for a new vote on SOPA today, but with the overwhelming support the measure is getting, we expect it will be back. There have been calls from some members to have experts on internet infrastructure testify on the matter, so it's possible the delay will provide that opportunity. |
| Sprint Kills Carrier IQ On Its Phones Posted: 16 Dec 2011 01:24 PM PST
This is a startling about-face from the Now Network. Sprint was out in front of the Carrier IQ fiasco claiming that the software was essential to its network performance. According to Sprint, its carrier partners have been instructed to remove Carrier IQ from all future software updates. Even phones that still have the service running will not be sending the data anywhere. Sprint users aren't totally out of the woods yet, though. The carrier has also affirmed its intention to continue "evaluating options regarding this diagnostic software as well as Sprint's diagnostic needs." Some replacement for Carrier IQ could be coming soon. Is this a 'better the devil you know' situation? |
| Head to Head: Spotify vs. Rdio Posted: 16 Dec 2011 12:36 PM PST At first glance, Spotify and Rdio could be mirror images of one another. Both streaming services offer a catalog of on-demand songs from all the major music labels, both feature strong social media integration, and heck, each offers two tiers of premium subscriptions at matching dollar amounts. Dig down beneath the surface, however, and you'll see that the devil's in the details. So which Internet music service delivers the most bang for your buck? Let's dive in and see!
Round 1: Music SelectionWhen it comes right down to it, the most important aspect of a streaming music service is the songs it offers. As we mentioned previously, both Rdio and Spotify enjoy song catalogs buoyed by participation from the major U.S. music labels, but one definitely outshines the other. Rdio features a 12 million‑song catalog, while Spotify tops that with a 15 million‑title library that includes almost everything you can think of—and it's adding thousands more on a daily basis. Plus, a lot of Spotify's tracks come from indie labels, which could sway many on-the-fence listeners.
Round 2: PricingBoth services offer a similar structure for their premium content: The $5 plan unlocks unlimited, ad-free streaming, while moving to the $10 version opens up device support. The difference lies in their free plans. Rdio's free model is ad-free, but limited to an unspecified number of tunes; Rdio wants users to treat it as a sampling rather than a free service. Spotify, on the other hand, recently announced that new users will get six months of unlimited free tunes in exchange for listening to a handful of ads; after the six-month mark, you'll be limited to 10 free hours every month.
Round 3: FlexibilityThe similarities between Rdio and Spotify continue on the flexibility front. Both offer support for most of the major mobile phone operating systems. Spotify supports Symbian, while Rdio supports Blackberry. Both let you play music around the house on your Sonos system or a handful of other home audio devices, but to be honest, each service lacks the sheer device support of, say, Pandora or Slacker. Then there are the sign-up woes: Rdio's limited free option may keep some folks away, while Spotify requires new users to have a Facebook account in order to sign up. Winner: Tie Round 4: Audio QualityMaking a call on audio quality is made more difficult by Rdio's refusal to settle on a solid number: All the company will say is that it's constantly tweaking the bitrate to achieve the best experience for listeners. Spotify's audio quality is more concrete. It streams songs at 160Kb/s through the desktop client and either 160Kb/s or a lower-bandwidth 96Kb/s (user's choice) on mobile clients. The bitrate goes up to 320Kb/s with a Premium subscription or for those listening over a Sonos player. If you toss aside the numbers and actually listen to the two services, however, Rdio sounds much more crisp and clear.
Round 5: Social FeaturesRdio asks you to start following other Rdio users, "influencers," or your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, or email before it even shows you a single track, and its dashboard shows recent activity that any Rdio subscriber has made. Plus, Rdio's group playlist collaboration is awesome. Spotify gives users the ability to quickly and easily share playlists and songs on Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Messenger by simply right-clicking a track, and the service allows you to create HTTP and Spotify links that open specific tracks when they're clicked. Both services can fully integrate with Facebook's Open Graph. Winner: Tie And the Winner Is…Rdio does a lot of things right; its desktop client features some of the best sounding tunes out there, and its social media integration is second to none and tied with only one. Unfortunately, that one is the one that matters in this particular contest: Spotify. While both services offer only average device support, Spotify's gargantuan 15 million‑track song library—the biggest of any streaming music service—gives it the lead over Rdio, and its free, ad-supported plan delivers the knockout blow. Both services have their strong points, but when it comes down to spending your hard-earned dollars, Spotify gets the nod.
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| Cool Site of the Week: IPChicken.com Posted: 16 Dec 2011 11:20 AM PST
By navigating to IPChicken.com, you'll gain instant access to valuable information that'll help you get away from your parent's Dell so that you can cosy up to your Grandfather's famous sausage and bread stuffing just a little bit sooner. Your current IP address, Name Address, and Remote Port information are all for the having--and without having to squeeze it out of your relatives at that.
A simple, no B.S. web tool, IPChicken.com is perfect for sorting out connection issues, setting up networked storage or getting your in-laws media server up and running in time to watch It's a Wonderful Life after dinner. Be sure to check in Every Friday for another edition of Maximum PC's Cool Site of the Week.
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| Square Enix Hacked, Data For 1.8 Million Users Possibly Breached Posted: 16 Dec 2011 11:05 AM PST
Fortunately, Square Enix says that credit card numbers weren't stored on the hacked hardware, the AFP reports. Nevertheless, the actual extent of the damage is not yet known and the company has remained mum on what actual information was breached. The company shut down its Square Enix Members service one hour after learning of the breach. Geographically, 1 million of the compromised accounts come from Japan, while the remaining 800,000 hail from North America. European servers weren't targeted by the intruders. |
| Security Firm Claims Google Is Conspiring To Kill Off Firefox Posted: 16 Dec 2011 10:37 AM PST
"The timing of the Google/Accuvant report is interesting, given that Google's search contract with Mozilla expired at the end of November," the NSS Labs report says. "Given that this report was commissioned much earlier in the year – according to the paper, research was completed in July 2011, yet not published until December 2011 – this would suggest a larger strategic move by Google to eliminate the competition. Examination of the test methodology indicates a bias in favor of Google Chrome at the expense of Mozilla Firefox." And that's just the opening paragraph. You can read the whole thing here (PDF). In addition to the claims made above, NSS says that its independent studies show that Chrome seriously beefed up its malware protection to the tune of 40 percent blockage, a five-fold increase over the previous levels – and it did so in the 11 day span of November 22 to December 2, right when Google's contract with Firefox expired. Firefox and Safari didn't see similar jumps, which leads NSS Labs researchers to conclude that Google is withholding data from the SafeBrowsing API it maintains and hosts, since those competing browsers also tap into the SafeBrowsing database of known phishing and malware sites. Thoughts? Do you think Google is playing an intricate game here, or is it all coincidence and separate events? |
| Zynga Shares Drop Below IPO Target in Nasdaq Debut Posted: 16 Dec 2011 09:31 AM PST
Zynga shares rose as much as 10 percent above their offer price today and hit $11 per share, but quickly fell below the IPO price, Reuters reports. It's currently trading for $9.73, down more than 1 percent below Zynga's target. Undeterred by the lukewarm reception, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus told Reuters he has "no regrets" about taking his company public. "Our approach has always been to focus on the longterm," Pincus said. "We thought this was the right time to go public." Part of the challenge for Zynga is in convincing investors it can continue to be profitable, despite its current dependance on Facebook. Roughly 95 percent of Zynga's revenue comes from Mark Zuckerberg's online playground. |
| AMD Radeon HD 7970 Specs Leaked to the Web Posted: 16 Dec 2011 09:14 AM PST
According to the slide, the memory will pipe up to 5.5Gbps of data through a 384-bit bus. The card will have 128 texture units, 32 CU and 2048 ALU stream processors, and 3.5 TFLOPs of raw compute power. The slide only lists 32 ROPs, which is a little disappointing considering recent murmurs that had the card pegged at 48 ROPs, but it's hard to argue with the rest of the spec sheet. The card will require 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors (one of each) and have a peak power draw of less than 300W, according to the slide. Image Credit: obr-hardware.com |
| Next Generation Xbox Console Won't Ship in 2012 Posted: 16 Dec 2011 08:38 AM PST
According to Fudzilla, any rumors suggesting a new Xbox console will come out in 2012 are false, plain and simple. "What we are now learning is that while Microsoft might show or talk about something related to the new console in 2012, the console itself will not arrive for purchase till 2013," Fudzilla says. Until Microsoft makes an announcement, all of the talk and rumors amount to little more than speculation, but what Fudzilla is saying makes sense (and for what it's worth, Fudzilla claims to be getting its info "directly from sources inside the company"). Even with the Wii U on the horizon, the Xbox 360 is in position to lead hardware sales into 2012, and if that's the case, there wouldn't be a whole lot of motivation for Microsoft to release something new. Image Credit: xbox-720.com |
The saga of MegaUpload's promotional music video just keeps getting weirder. Universal Music Group (UMG) had the video pulled last week, claiming that MegaUpload didn't have the rights necessary to publish it. The file host begs to differ, and had the video reinstated. The disagreement has been heating up and made its way to the courts. UMG's newest legal filing with the courts makes some 
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was set to pass a house committee today by a wide margin, but the vote has unexpectedly been 
The outrage over Carrier IQ was bubbling just below the surface for months before it exploded out of modding circles a few weeks ago. The diagnostics software is on many phones, particularly Android handsets, and is used to gather extensive usage data. After the public outcry, Sprint has 
Winner: Spotify
As we trundle towards the final days of December, we draw ever closer to the observance of an annual tradition that many Maximum PC readers partake in whether they want to or not: traveling home to break bread with far-flung relatives, and being asked to fix their computer's issues before they even have a chance to get their coat off. The good news is that you'll be rewarded with a turkey dinner for your efforts! The bad news is that every single one of your relatives will hamper those efforts by offering ham-handed advice drawn from a wealth of whimsical non-computer related life experiences. While we can't stop the pain of being surrounded by computer-breaking turkey-craving luddites, we can suggest a tool that'll help you to get to that holiday feast just a little faster: It's called 
A quick consult of the Chinese calendar says that we're knee-deep in the Year of the Rabbit, but it seems a lot more like the Year of the Hacker to us. Fortunately, most of the LulzSec and Anonymous bru-ha-ha that dominated the summer seems to have died down, but Square Enix is delivering a hacktastic lump of coal to its customers just in time for Christmas. Yesterday, the company revealed that its servers had been breached an up to 1.8 million member accounts may have been compromised.
Got your tin foil hats on? Good – you'll need it for this. Earlier this week, Accuvant Labs released a study that named Chrome the most secure browser in all the land. Um, one problem: 
The company responsible for Farmville, Mafia Wars, and several other popular social games is finding out that nothing's guaranteed in the second coming of the dot-com bubble. Zynga shares began trading today, and at first, it looked as though Zynga would follow in the footsteps of Groupon, LinkedIn, and other social sites that have gone public and exploded on the stock market.
A slide leaked on 
It's been quite a year-and-a-half for Microsoft and its Xbox 360 console. In the past 18 months or so, we've seen Microsoft launch the Xbox 360 S with new a new style controller, the Kinect come out, and another major Dashboard update, this time with voice controlled navigation and support for tons of apps. Given all these newfangled additions to the 360 platform, it's no wonder Microsoft isn't in a rush to release an Xbox 720 (or whatever it will be called).| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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