General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Tor Project Considers Paying Users $100/mo. For Operating High-Speed Tor Relays

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 10:41 AM PDT

For privacy-minded types and people in repressed parts of the world, Tor is a valuable tool. The anonymity-enabling onion routing service does have a few drawbacks, however, including its sometimes sub-optimal connection speeds. Tor's browsing speeds have gotten noticeably better over recent months and years, and the poor connections may disappear completely if a proposal that's currently under consideration is adopted: actually paying people and organizations with fast connections to act as a Tor exit relay.

The proposal was actually put forth by Tor founder Rodger Dingledine, who has been vociferously against paid relays for years. He recently dove into Tor data, however, and found that Tor clients -- which randomly connect to available exit relays -- connect to the five fastest available servers about a quarter of the time thanks to Tor's built-in load balancing. More capable connections get more Tor client attention, which makes sense from a congestion standpoint, but Dingledine worries that it could adversely affect the diversity of the overall Tor network.

Dingledine suggests that by offering to pay a monthly fee to hosts who operate a high speed exit relay, more people may be inclined to offer their connection for Tor use. The more speedy relays there are, the more diversified the load balancing becomes, making the overall Tor use experience that much faster and more diverse.

Of course, the plan will only work if it attracts people and organizations with high speed connections: to that end, Dingledine suggests offering $100/mo. to folks who can supply speeds of at least 100Mbps. (Other rates will also be considered.) To people who think the figure seems high, Dingledine offers the following:

We should keep in mind that the primary cost of running an exit relay is effort, not dollars: it takes dedication to find an ISP who will host it, and to hold that ISP's hand when an abuse complaint arrives. Or said another way, hosting costs are in many cases not the biggest barrier to running an exit relay.

The Tor Project has already lined up a backer for paid relays; the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the group behind the Voice of America website, has agreed to fund 125-plus fast exit relays over the next year once the details are hammered out. Dingledine warns that Tor can't become dependent on paid exit relays to the point that it crumbles if funding is yanked, however.

You can read Dingledine's entire paid node proposal here. Be warned: it's long.

Do you think the proposal for paying high-speed Tor server operators is a good idea, or do you think it could lead to the demise of Tor as we know it?

Via SC Magazine

HBO On Netflix? Not A Chance, Says HBO

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 09:59 AM PDT

Netflix's recent return to profits must have made CEO Reed Hastings a wee bit giddy; buried deep in the company's new earnings report was a paragraph that teased the possibility of a Netflix-HBO partnership. Will we someday be able to stream Game of Thrones? In a word: no. After the press circulated the speculation yesterday, HBO promptly released a statement squashing the rumor with extreme prejudice.

"We are not in discussions and have no plans to work with Netflix," Reuters reports HBO spokesman Jeff Cusson as saying. Ouch. So there you have it, cord-cutters; don't get your hopes up for on-demand True Blood anytime soon -- at least if you don't have HBO Go. And since you need an HBO subscription to access HBO Go, you wouldn't be a cord cutter if you had it.

HBO's quibbles with Netflix are nothing new, and it isn't limited to streaming video. Earlier this year, HBO stopped giving Netflix a wholesale discount for DVDs of its shows, but only after Hastings publicly identified the premium movie station as Netflix's biggest rival. Oops!

Cisco Workers Brace for Another Round of Job Cuts

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 07:37 AM PDT

San Jose's networking kingpin Cisco is planning to hand out about 1,300 pink slips, which equates to 2 percent of its workforce, as it attempts to cope with a sluggish global economy and flat sales. The latest round of layoffs come just one year after Cisco announced 6,500 job cuts, but reducing jobs is not a cure-all to Cisco's problems, nor is a weak economy the only thing the company has to worry about.

Less than hour after Cisco announced the planned layoffs, VMWare said it was acquiring Nicira for $1.26 billion. A Bloomberg report called the back-to-back announcements a "double whammy," noting that Nicira develops technology that lets businesses enjoy networking features without having to buy costly hardware.

"VMware's purchase of Nicira underscores what may be an even bigger problem -- companies may simply not need as much Cisco gear," Bloomberg writes.

Cisco, which had 65,223 workers as of May of this year, said in a statement that the job cuts "are part of a continuous process of simplifying the company, as well as assessing the economic environment in certain parts of the world." How many of those job cuts will affect the Bay Area is unknown at this time.

Image Credit: Flickr (simonov)

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Avoids German Court's Ban Hammer, Galaxy Tab 7.7 Not So Lucky

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 07:11 AM PDT

If you're into sports, then you know how maddening it can be to see the referees penalize teams like crazy in one game, and then swallow their whistles in the next. That makes it hard for players and coaches to decipher the rules, which is exactly how Samsung must be feeling right about now. Not only are different courts around the world issuing opposite rulings in Samsung's patent fight with Apple, at least one is also factoring in the size of Samsung's devices, or so it seems.

According to Foss Patents, a German appeals courts sided with Samsung and upheld a lower court's denial of a preliminary injunction Apple was seeking against the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, which is a slightly modified version of the original Galaxy Tab 10.1.

At the same time, Apple won a preliminary injunction against the smaller Galaxy Tab 7.7, effectively banning sales of the device across the entire European Union. The reason for the discrepancy in rulings is because the Galaxy Tab 7.7 is essentially a smaller version of the original Galaxy Tab 10.1, not the modified 10.1N. Makes sense, but it comes as little consolation to Samsung.

"Samsung is disappointed with the court's ruling," the company said in a statement, according to AllThingsD. "We will continue to take all available measures, including legal action, to protect our intellectual property rights and defend against Apple's claims to ensure our products remain available to consumers throughout the European Union."

Venue also matters. Apple has been successful in banning sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 here in the U.S., but over the in U.K., a judge denied Apple's request and further ordered the company post a message on its website and take out ads in newspapers and magazines exonerating Samsung by declaring the Galaxy Tab doesn't copy the iPad's design.

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Tough Crowd: Apple Posts $8.8 Billion Profit, Falls Short of Analysts' Expectations

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 06:47 AM PDT

Apple late Tuesday announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 third quarter ended June 30, 2012, and the numbers are nothing short of obscene. All those iDevices, app sales, and other products and services combined to rake in an $8.8 billion profit on quarterly revenue of $35 billion, compared to $7.3 billion profit on $28.6 billion in revenue during the same quarter one year ago. Nonetheless, analysts collectively shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Meh, it could have been better.'

Investors have come to expect much from Apple, sometimes too much, so when the Cupertino company reported 'only' 26 million iPhone sales in Q3, Apple's share price promptly dipped more than 5 percent in after hours trading, The New York Times reports. Those iPhone sales represent a 28 percent unit growth over the same quarter last year, however they're well short of the 35 million iPhone devices Apple sold in the previous quarter. What that likely means is that consumers are already looking ahead to the iPhone 5, which is expected to launch this fall.

"Our weekly iPhone sales continue to be impacted by rumors and speculation of future products," Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer told USAToday.

Apple iPad sales are still going strong. The company sold 17 million iPad devices during the quarter, which is a whopping 84 percent increase over one year ago. It also sold 4 million Macs (2 percent unit increase year-over-year) and 6.8 million iPods (10 percent decline year-over-year).

"We're thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "We've also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we've got in the pipeline."

Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Apple anticipates revenue of around $34 billion.

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Qualcomm's Reference Android Tablet Intended for Developers, Woos Reviewers

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 06:15 AM PDT

Qualcomm's newest mobile development platform is a quad-core tablet powered by a Snapdragon APQ8064 S4 Pro system-on-chip (SoC) clocked at 1.5GHz, an Adreno 320 GPU, and 2GB of RAM. It runs on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and has a 10.1-inch display pumping out 1366x768 pixels. All that juicy hardware (save for the screen resolution, which falls well short of the iPad 3's Retina Display and other Android models boasting Full HD 1080p panels) adds up to a powerful Mobile Development Platform (MDP/T) intended to give programmers a potent device to develop, test, optimize, and showcase their latest apps and games.

"Access to the APQ8064 processor with its asynchronous Quad CPU cores gives Android application developers a powerful platform to develop their differentiated applications for rapid market release," said John Traynor, vice president of products, Bsquare, which announced the general availability of Qualcomm's tablet. "This access, combined with best-in-class engineering support and testing solutions from Bsquare, provides a major benefit to application and game developers developing for a wide range of pre-commercial devices."

It's the first tablet form factor to feature a Snapdragon-based development platform with Bsquare, which distributes Qualcomm development kits. The tablet's also been putting up impressive numbers across the Web. Benchmark comparisons are available at The Verge, and they show Qualcomm's tablet trouncing high-powered tablets and smartphones like the Acer Iconia Tab A700, Asus Transformer Pad, Galaxy S III, HTC One X, and HTC One S. For example, in GLBenchmark 2.1's Egypt test, Qualcomm's deviced posted 131fps, more than double the 63fps Asus' Transformer Pad could muster.

A similar situation is seen at SlashGear where the developer tablet "blew through the roof" in several Android benchmark apps. Based on these early numbers, it's safe to say the future of Android tablet development is bright.

It didn't take long for Bsquare to sell out of Qualcomm's $1,299 tablet, with new orders slated to ship in 2-3 weeks.

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Latest Firefox Aurora Includes Web App Support

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 05:37 AM PDT

It's no longer hard to imagine a world where Web apps are just as powerful and popular as—if not more than—desktop apps. As inviting as such a world may seem to many, there is still plenty of work that needs to be done before web apps can give native apps a run for their money. Mozilla, for one, is doing its bit. We're not talking about the highly ambitious Firefox OS (formerly Boot to Gecko) here. Instead,we're referring to something much more basic: Web app support.

Among a handful of other features and fixes, the latest Firefox Aurora build comes with Web app support baked in. This build, which will eventually become Firefox 16 in October, is noteworthy due to the fact that it's the first to support the long-overdue Mozilla Marketplace, a store for Web apps (à la Chrome Web Store). Currently, only a limited number of "invited Mozillians" have access to the Mozilla Marketplace, which is expected to open its doors to the general public sometime later this year.

Mozilla sees Web apps as being central to its mission of delivering a people-centered experience. As part of its Kilimanjaro initiative, the open-source outfit is trying to "realize a tightly integrated set of products" so as to leave the user in greater control of their apps and identities across multiple devices.

"The Kilimanjaro Event is an initiative to bring Mozilla projects (Firefox on desktop and mobile, Marketplace, Persona, and B2G) together in one integrated experience. It is an opportunity for our entire community to focus on products and features which are most important to Mozilla's mission of an open internet and web platform," reads the Kilimanjaro wiki page on Mozilla's site.

Report: Windows RT to Remain Limited to Select OEMs Until January

Posted: 25 Jul 2012 05:02 AM PDT

In recent times, we've become quite used to a steady stream of Windows 8 news, but the same can not be said to be true of Windows RT. Details of this ARM-friendly version of Windows have been few and far between. But then that's what the rumor mill is for, isn't it? According to an unconfirmed report by the Taiwan-based China Times, Microsoft is tightly controlling the development of Windows RT devices, so much so that at the moment it's only allowing a handful of OEMs near this stripped-down, ARM-compatible version of Windows.

If the report is to be believed, the products that make up the first wave of Windows RT tablets will all be from a handful of top-tier vendors handpicked by chip makers NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Apparently, each chip maker was asked to partner with a maximum of two device makers for the development of Windows RT. This reportedly led to NVIDIA pairing up with Asus and Lenovo; TI with Toshiba; and Qualcomm with Samsung and HP. But with HP deciding to go with x86 for its first Windows 8 tablet, Qualcomm is said to have brought in Dell to replace HP.

The report further claims that this restriction is only for the first wave of Windows RT tablets and the platform will be open to all other OEMs come January.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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