Eidos Montreal has announced the fourth title in the "Thief" series, allowing gamers to slip into Garrett's shoes once again as the scourge of The City.
"Eidos-Montréal is excited to unveil, our previously secret second title in development at the studio, as Thief 4, the next installment in the legendary series!" Stephane D'Astous, the game's general manager, announced on the Eidos site.
"Were in the early development stages for Thief 4, but this is an incredibly ambitious project and a very exciting one," D'Astous wrote. "It's too early for us to offer any specific game details, right now we are focused on recruiting the very best talent to join the core team at the studio and help us make, what we believe will be one of the most exciting games on the market."The "Thief" series commands a special place in the heart of PC gamers. Released just a few months after id's "Quake 2," "Thief: The Dark Project" launched an alternative mindset in the minds of first-person shooters: that obstacles could be stealthily approached, ambushed, and even avoided. "Thief" was the first "first-person sneaker," actively encouraging players to incapacitate, rather than kill, enemies. That, combined with an engaging story and its own mythos, drew players in.
"Thief" was also designed by Looking Glass Studios, which commands the same reverence that a company like Apple does, with one difference: Apple is still around, and Looking Glass went out of business in 2000, giving any subsequent games the tinge of nostalgia. The intellectual property, however, has been passed around between develop Ion Storm and Eidos, and has now gone "in house".
Eidos is also developing "Deus Ex 3," another former Looking Glass property, that was one of the first to introduce RPG elements into a first-person action title, and also to present alternative methods of overcoming obstacles and enemies.
The problem with both the evolution of the "Deus Ex" and "Thief" series, to some, has been the simultaneous devleopment of "Deus Ex 2" and "Thief 3" for the Xbox console as well as the PC. That had notable effects on gameplay, including small levels that were broken up by load screens, which broke the illusion of seamless gameplay.
Selasa, 12 Mei 2009
'Thief 4' Adds Sequel to Iconic PC Game Series
Facebook Yanks Two Holocaust Hate Groups
Two Facebook groups dedicated to Holocaust denial have been removed from the social networking site because their members were using the groups as a forum to promote hate, Facebook said Monday.
"The group description didn't promote hate but the members were beginning to use it as a forum to promote hate through their wall posts," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail.
Links to the groups in question – titled "Based on the facts … There was no Holocaust" and "Holocaust is a Holohoax" – now simply redirect to the Facebook main page. Three other Holocaust denial groups, however, remain on the site.
"We are monitoring these groups and if the discussion among members degrades to the point of promoting hate or violence, despite whatever disclaimer the group description provides, we will take them down," Schnitt said "This has happened in the past, especially when controversial groups are publicized."
The issue made headlines last week when attorney Brian Cuban, brother of tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, wrote a blog post that challenged Facebook to remove the groups. He argued, in part, that since Holocaust denial is illegal in some of the countries in which Facebook has a presence, these groups should be banned.
Last week, Facebook responded that it already bans these groups in countries where Holocaust denial laws exist. The site removes content that threatens violence towards people but does not remove content that speaks out against countries, political entities, or ideas. Holocaust denial falls into the latter category, Facebook said.
TechCrunch posted a scathing critique of Facebook's policy this morning, taking the site to task for allowing the denial groups while cracking down on photos of women breastfeeding. "Jew Haters Welcome at Facebook, as Long as They Aren't Lactating," the headline reads. He slammed Facebook for allowing denial groups to post photos of naked children used in Nazi medical experiments, likening them to child porn, and called the site creators cowards.
Schnitt responded to the TechCrunch story in its comments section, reiterating that while Facebook finds Holocaust denial to be "repugnant and ignorant" it is not a violation of its terms of service.
"We believe in Facebook's mission that giving people tools to make the world more open is a better way to combat ignorance or deception than censorship, though we recognize that others — including those at the company, disagree. We may be fools for doing the former but not 'cowards,'" Schnitt wrote.
In regards to the breastfeeding photos, Schnitt said Facebook only bans photos of naked women who happen to be breastfeeding, not every single breastfeeding photo.
Cuban, meanwhile, wrote another blog entry this time addressing Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg directly.
His original argument regarding countries that ban Holocaust denial, he wrote, was "short-sighted [and a] back door lawyer's approach" to the debate.
"By claiming open discussion as the rationale for allowing these groups to exist, Facebook is playing games with semantics," Cuban wrote. "Facebook is taking form over substance to protect their imaginary subjective corporate line in the sand they have drawn."
Cuban asked Zuckerberg to define "open discussion" and to reveal if it consulted any experts before coming up with its policy.
Lenovo Announces Netbook with 3G
Lenovo on Monday announced the newest incarnation of its netbook line, the S10-2. The S10-2 has slimmed down to a mere .71 inches thick and a starting weight of 2.2 pounds. The new model also comes equipped with Dolby speakers and a new chassis design that comes in black, white, pink, or gray.
Like our recent Editors' Choice budget laptop, the Acer Aspire 3935, the S10-2 employs a multitouch touchpad (hopefully to better effect). For extra protection, the laptop incorporates VeriFace face-recognition software, as well as OneKey Rescue System for data recovery.The S10-2 will likely be a good candidate for our GreenTech certification. It's RoHS and Energy Star compliant, and even comes with energy-management software.
Otherwise, the S10-2 is pretty similar to its predecessors, incorporating three USB ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, and an 89 percent keyboard (this time with an enlarged right shift key). The laptop sports a 10.1-inch LED screen and offers 1GB of RAM and 160GB of storage space. Lenovo promises as much as 6 hours of battery life with the S10-2's 6-cell battery.
The S10-2 should be available later this month for $349. A 3G-equipped version is slated for release this summer.
Kamis, 07 Mei 2009
AMD Shakes Up Organization, Promotes Executives
Advanced Micro Devices Inc merged its microprocessor and graphics chip businesses on Wednesday, its latest effort to adjust its structure and claw back market share lost to larger rival Intel Corp.
The newly merged division will be spearheaded by graphics chip executive Rick Bergman.
The company also announced that Randy Allen, who was in charge of the pivotal business of producing chips for servers and workstation PCs, has left the company.The shake-up marks AMD latest move to revamp is operations and better compete with Intel Corp, the world's No.1 microprocessor maker, in the wake of AMD's bungled introduction of the Barcelona chip in 2007.
The Barcelona chip was delayed for months due to a technical bug, causing AMD to give back hard-won market share to Intel and resulting in massive losses.
Last year, AMD's Dirk Meyer replaced Hector Ruiz as CEO. This year, the corporation spun off its chip manufacturing assets into a separate company.
Bergman was previously Senior Vice President of AMD's graphics products group and joined AMD through the company's $5.4 billion acquisition of Canadian graphics chip firm ATI in 2006.
While AMD has written off nearly more than $2 billion related to that acquisition, recent versions of graphics chips produced by AMD have received positive reviews and helped AMD compete against graphics rival Nvidia Corp, said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Patrick Wang.
Wednesday's reorganization is "just putting fresh blood up front and hopefully replicating the success they've had in graphics," Wang said.
AMD said the new products group will be responsible for aligning the graphics and microprocessor development groups into a single unified organization.
The company also announced an Advanced Technology group focused on developing future technology, a marketing group, and a customer group responsible for expanding AMD's customer relationships globally, as part of its new organizational structure.
AMD did not provide a reason for Allen's departure, but said in a statement he has been an important engineering and business leader "who has played a key role in many of AMD's most significant achievements in recent years."
AMD shares, which have more than doubled since March, were down 1 cent at $4.30 in after hours trading on Wednesday.
Verizon Launches MiFi Hotspot Without Subscription
Verizon Wireless is now the first carrier to launch Novatel's MiFi personal hotspot gadget, and there's no subscription required.
Yes, if you want to, you can pay $99.99 for the hotspot and $59.99 a month for 5GB of data. But to me, the killer combination for occasional travelers is $269.99 for the device and $15 for an unlimited use 'day pass' - no commitment required. There's also a 250MB plan for $39.99/month.The MiFi is a Wi-Fi router with a twist: it's battery powered and has a cellular modem built in. So just turn it on anywhere Verizon has a signal, and pow, you're broadcasting Wi-Fi to up to five PCs. The battery lasts for about four hours of use and 40 hours of standby on a charge, according to Verizon Wireless. And the MiFi is pretty tiny: only 3.5" x 2.3" x .4" and 2.05 oz.
All five computers will share one EVDO Rev A connection, so you'll be splitting about a megabit down and 500 kilobits up between whomever's on the hotspot. And they'll all contribute to filling the monthly data quota. But still, this makes getting online with Verizon's network easier than ever.
When we first heard about the MiFi last December, Novatel pointed out that the router is actually a tiny Linux PC, capable of running its own software. The router could check e-mail and store messages on a memory card without a PC, in theory. But Verizon's version looks like it's just a Wi-Fi router - for now, at least.
The MiFi will go on sale May 17.
Top OEMs Form Rival Spec for Wireless Multimedia
Another consortium of top technology firms has banded together to promote a high-speed wireless interface, this time taking on the intersection between wireless video transmission and data.
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) includes chip vendors like Atheros, Broadcom, and Intel; OEMs like NEC, Panasonic, and Samsung, as well as Microsoft and a secretive startup, known as Wilocity.
On the surface, the alliance seems very similar to WirelessHD, a group of companies, some of them sharing membership in both groups, that also are targeting 60-GHz wireless technology. The advantage of 60-GHz networks is that they are currently unlicensed, and the spectrum is available internationally, in the United States, Japan, Europe and Asia. On the surface, the alliance seems very similar to WirelessHD, a group of companies, some of them sharing membership in both groups, that also are targeting 60-GHz wireless technology. The advantage of 60-GHz networks is that they are currently unlicensed, and the spectrum is available internationally, in the United States, Japan, Europe and Asia.
Both seek to use frequency wireless links to transmit data, and have apparently approached the problem from different directions. WirelessHD was formed to use the technology to replace HDMI cables in the living rooms as a high-speed point-to-point link for audio and visual data. At CES, however, the company showed off wireless transmission via an extension to its specification. Meanwhile, WiGig executives spoke more generally about transmitting data, which could include multimedia components, and also about obtaining HDCP 2.0 certification.
WiGig has its roots in the 802.11VHT working group, which split into the 802.11ac working group to enhance the performance of traditional 2.4- and 5-GHz networks, and 802.11ad, which covers the 60-GHz technology.
In an interview, Bill McFarland, the chief technical officer at Atheros, said that the goal of WiGig was to encourage "co-existence" of the different wireless technologies using the 60-GHz band, and that the group would sponsor interoperability tests similar to the Wi-Fi Alliance.
WiGig's specification will be done by the end of 2009, said Ali Sadri, chairman of the WiGig Alliance and the director of wireless PAN standards at Intel. Testing will begin soon after that. "A lot has been completed already," Sadri said.
The question, to some, is how the standards will co-exist with others already in the market, especially WirelessHD.
Intel has been heavily involved in the work being done in the 802.11VHT groups, with one Intel engineer, Eldad Perahia, listed as the author of both the sub-60-GHz design document as well as the 60-GHz group. But it's also thought that the specifications aren't due for a year or two. If that's true, wondered John Marshall, the chairman of the WirelessHD consortium, there's a question of how an industry group would be able to guide an engineering consortium.
"What has usually happened is that the IEEE publishes a spec and the Wi-Fi Alliance cherry-picks what they want to support and designs interoperability testing" and logo certifications," Marshall said. "If I understand this right, this would be the opposite."
If special-interest groups differentiate with one another, then there's an opportunity for co-existence, Marshall added. "Hypothetically speaking, if they're saying the same thing as WirelessHD does, then they're trying to pick a fight with WirelessHD."
When asked about competition, WiGig's Sadri said that the alliance had no intention of competing with WirelessHD, a sentiment Marshall shared. "We have no intention of competing with any other 60-GHz technology," Sadri said. "I'm hoping that we can reach out and collaborate in terms of understanding each other."
John LeMoncheck, the chief executive of SiBEAM, which provides the technology behind the WirelessHD technology, said he was pleased that the industry was finally taking notice of the 60-GHz technology. "When we started in 2004, I gotta be honest with you," he said. "We were laughed out of some rooms for talking about 60-GHz technology."
The final differentiator may be products. SiBEAM and Panasonic have already collaborated on a wireless HDTV which is on sale in Japan. But Panasonic also signed on to the WiGig group, as well.
Dell Adds WiMAX Options to Two Notebooks
Dell has added WiMAX as an option to two notebooks, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.
Specifically, Dell has added an optional WiMAX/802.11n card to the Dell Studio 17 and the Dell Studio XPS 16. The upgrade will only cost $60, according to the blog post by Dell blogger Lionel Menchaca.
By default, both notebooks ship with an 802.11g Wi-Fi card. The Dell Studio 17 starts at $649, while the Dell Studio 16 XPS starts at $1,099As Menchaca noted, however, WiMAX's greatest weakness is its coverage areas: Portland, Ore.; Atlanta, and parts of Baltimore, areas where more conventional 3G technologies already blanket. For his part, Clearwire chairman called those technologies "legacy nonsense".
"Once [WiMAX] is available in more cities, you won't have to spend time looking for hotspots," Menchaca wrote. "Compared to mobile broadband, WiMAX offers flexible service offerings. You can get a day pass or go month-to-month with no long-term contracts required. WiMAX is fast too—it offers peak download rates of about 13Mbps and up to 3Mbps upload speeds."
That's not to say that Dell is betting the farm on WiMAX, however; Dell is also "looking at" LTE, a competing next-gen cellular technology expected to tie together the networks used by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and others.
Amazon Officially Launches Widescreen Kindle DX
The DX, the third model in the Kindle line, boasts a 9.7-inch screen, which is 2.5 times the size of the first- and second-generation Kindles, and was designed to display periodicals and textbooks.
The Kindle DX costs a lofty $489, compared with the Kindle 2's $359. The DX is available now for pre-order through Amazon's Kindle DX page and will go on sale this summer.The Kindle DX's E-Ink display now features 16 different shades of gray. The new model has native PDF support for documents that can be imported via USB. And PDF content can be read without scrolling, zooming or panning.
A on the iPhone, auto-rotation automatically switches the DX's display mode when it is flipped by a user. And the DX features 3G wireless access and 3.3 Gbytes of storage, which, according to the company, should hold roughly 3,500 books.
In keeping with the educational focus of the Kindle DX, Amazon has struck deals with three top textbook publishers, including Pearson, Wiley, and Cengage--the three make up 60 percent of the textbook market and include imprints such as Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Benjamin Cummings, Longman & Prentice Hall (Pearson); Wadsworth, Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, Delmar, Heinle, Schirmer, South-Western (Cengage); and Wiley Higher Education.
Amazon will also be launching trial programs with a number of universities, including Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The program will make the new device available to students in the fall.
Amazon has also launched deals with two top newspaper publishers, The New York Times Company and Washington Post Company, making subscription content from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post available at a "reduced price."
Senin, 04 Mei 2009
Adobe Announces Acrobat, Reader Fix
Adobe has announced that they will release an update for a newly-reported vulnerability in Acrobat and Reader on all platforms by May 12th.
The vulnerability was the first of two acknowledged by Adobe on Wednesday. They say the updates will cover Windows versions of Acrobat and Reader 9.x, 8,x and 7.x, and UNIX and Mac versions 9.x and 8.x.Adobe also has confirmed the second vulnerability, but says they have only been able to confirm it as exploitable on UNIX. They are still investigating this issue. The researcher who reported the vulnerability only claimed to have tested on Linux.
In the meantime there are still no reports of exploits in the wild. If you want to mitigate the vulnerability(*) you can do so by disabling JavaScript in Acrobat or Reader. To disable JavaScript in the Reader or Acrobat follow these instructions:
1. Launch Acrobat or Adobe Reader.
2. Select Edit>Preferences
3. Select the JavaScript Category
4. Uncheck the 'Enable Acrobat JavaScript' option
5. Click OK
RIM, HP Announce BlackBerry Print-on-the-Go Tech
Research in Motion and Hewlett-Packard announced a partnership Monday to allow BlackBerry users to print to the nearest physical printer, using cloud services.
Dubbed CloudPrint, the service will be made available to both users of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, used by business customers, as well as the consumer-focused BlackBerry Internet Service. The service is part of a larger partnership announced Monday between Hewlett-Packard and RIM, which is hosting its Wireless Enterprise Symposium 2009 in Orlando, Flor., this week. Shane Robison, HP's executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer, will deliver one of the keynote addresses.
As the conference's name suggests, the focus will be on the enterprise. RIM also announced that HP is introducing software to centrally monitor and manage the extended BlackBerry solution ecosystem, including the BlackBerry Enterprise Server software, mail servers, databases, Microsoft Active Directory and server operating systems such as Windows Server. HP also said that its ProLiant servers can be used to run the BES software.
The CloudPrint service will not require an HP printer, or a specialized driver, HP said. It will print documents, photos or Web pages. However, the companies did not provide a timetable for when the service would be made available, and whether it would be provided via RIM's applications store or as an operating-system update.
"RIM and HP are working together to deliver solutions to customers that weave mobility into their daily operations – from innovative new services in the cloud to managed mobile services for the enterprise," said Jim Balsillie, co-chief executive officer, Research In Motion, in a statement. "Through our collaboration with HP, businesses will have access to an expanded set of applications and services for their BlackBerry smartphone deployments."
