Shuttle Flight to Save Hubble Telescope to Launch May 11

The space shuttle Atlantis and a crew of seven astronauts are officially set for a planned May 11 launch to give the Hubble Space Telescope one last upgrade, NASA announced Thursday.

After more than half a year of delays, top shuttle mission managers found that Atlantis and its crew are ready to

overhaul the 19-year-old Hubble for the final time. Liftoff is set for 2:01 p.m. EDT (1801 GMT) on launch day.

NASA announced the official launch date after a day-long meeting at the agency's Kennedy Space Center launch site in Florida to review the shuttle's readiness for flight. In a NASA first, the space agency announced the shuttle launch decision via the micro-blogging Web site Twitter.

"The poll is unanimous. We are GO for a May 11 launch for space shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to service Hubble," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick wrote in the Twitter announcement. NASA will discuss the upcoming launch during a press conference on NASA TV at 5:00 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT).

Last flight to Hubble

Commanded by veteran spaceflyer Scott Altman, Atlantis and its crew are slated to launch on an 11-day mission to Hubble. Five back-to-back spacewalks are scheduled to add new instruments, replace broken gyroscopes and old batteries, as well as attach a docking mechanism for a future robotic vehicle. The astronauts will also attempt unprecedented repairs on equipment never designed to be fixed in space.

If all goes well, the mission will extend Hubble's mission life through at least 2014, mission managers said.

Initially slated to launch in October 2008, the Hubble servicing mission has been delayed for months after a data handling unit aboard the space telescope failed unexpectedly last year. The added chore of fixing that broken part was added to the flight.

Mission managers initially targeted a May 12 launch for Atlantis, but decided last week to target an earlier liftoff in order to get at least three chances to lift off before standing down due to launch range traffic.

NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990 and has sent astronauts to repair or upgrade the observatory four times. With the space shuttle fleet set to retire in 2010, Atlantis' mission will be the fifth and last service call, NASA has said.

Rescue shuttle on standby

NASA is also prepared if the mission goes substantially awry. While Atlantis is in space, a second space shuttle - the Endeavour orbiter - will be on standby to launch a rescue mission in case of an emergency.

Unlike recent shuttle missions to the International Space Station, where astronauts can seek refuge if their orbiter suffers critical damage, Atlantis astronauts have no such safe haven. They cannot reach the station from Hubble because the space telescope flies in higher orbit than the orbiting lab and in a different orbital inclination, or tilt relative to Earth's equator.

The mission also has a higher risk of damage from space debris, about a 1-in-221 chance of a critical strike. Missions to the space station have about a 1-in-300 chance of being struck, NASA officials have said. The space agency's benchmark for space debris risk is a 1-in-200 chance of a serious hit, they added.

Since Atlantis cannot reach the space station from Hubble's position, Endeavour is primed to launch within a week of a declared emergency with a sparse crew of four astronauts.

According to the plan, Endeavour would rendezvous with Atlantis, where the stricken shuttle's astronauts would perform three spacewalks to abandon ship and return home. Atlantis would then be disposed of during re-entry over the Pacific Ocean, NASA officials have said.

NASA believes the likelihood of actually needing the rescue mission to be extremely remote.

Atlantis is currently scheduled to land on Friday, May 22 at the end of the Hubble mission. Once the shuttle returns, NASA would begin preparing Endeavour for a planned June mission to continue construction of the International Space Station.

SPACE.com -- Shuttle Flight to Save Hubble Telescope to Launch May 11

Windows 7 RC now available on MSDN, TechNet & Connect

Microsoft has just announced the availability of the Windows 7 Release Candidate for MSDN and TechNet customers. In addition, we have confirmed that it is also available on Microsoft Connect for those enrolled in the Windows 7 test program.

"Listening to our partners and customers has been fundamental to the development of Windows 7," said Bill Veghte, senior vice president for the Windows business at Microsoft. "We heard them and worked hard to deliver the highest quality Release Candidate in the history of Windows. We have more partner support than we've ever had for an RC and are pleased to say that the Windows 7 RC has hit the quality and compatibility bar for enterprises to start putting it through its paces and testing in earnest."

Microsoft will be releasing the RC to the public on May 5th and it's expected the RC will be available to millions more customers than the beta.

For more information on what has changed from the beta, please see our Beta to Release Candidate guide.

Windows 7 RC now available on MSDN, TechNet & Connect

Wiimotes get wireless induction charging

Induction charging is a pretty awesome new technology that we're going to start seeing all over the place. What it does is allow you to charge gadgets with no wires; simply place the gadget on the charging surface and it'll juice up like magic. And now you can do this with your Wiimotes without taking the rubber sleeves off.

The Energizer Wiimote Induction Charging System lets you just toss your Wiimotes on it and it'll charge them up automatically. No plugs, no wires and no having remove the sleeves to get to the batteries. Get excited, because this is how you're going to charge up basically everything in the not-too-distant future.

Wiimotes get wireless induction charging | DVICE

Intel Cuts SSD Prices, Makes More 1.8-Inch SSDs for Netbooks and Small Laptops

Pricing cuts will spur greater SSD adoption

Intel is lowering prices on several of its SSDs in a response to increased competition in the burgeoning SSD market. The world's largest semiconductor company makes SSDs using NAND flash produced by IM Flash Technologies, an Intel joint venture with Micron Technologies.

The X25-M series of mainstream 2.5-inch SSDs, which use Multi-Level Cell flash, is the target of the price cuts. The 160GB model will receive a $100 price cut off the MSRP, while the 80GB model will drop $50 in price. However, the street prices are much lower, as retailers react to demand for the popular Vertex series of SSDs produced by OCZ Technology.

Increased production and competition has forced a dramatic drop in prices. Intel launched its 160GB X25-M drive for $945 just four short months ago. Today, it is available for two-thirds of its original price, a savings of over $300. The price for the 80GB model has been cut almost in half since its launch.

Intel will also be making available more 80GB and 160GB SSDs in the 1.8-inch form factor. The retail supply of the X18-M series has been limited since its launch. These drives are used mostly in netbooks and smaller laptops which are space constrained.

Meanwhile, the X25-E series targeted at the enterprise server market will also soon face pricing and capacity pressure from OCZ and Super Talent.

Super Talent will soon be shipping SLC-based SSDs with up to 256GB of storage, which OCZ will counter with their Vertex EX series targeting the enterprise server and tiered storage markets.

Intel will fight back in this lucrative market, with designs for a 128GB SLC drive and a 320GB SSD using 34nm MLC NAND chips. They are expected to be released later in 2009.

Model	December 2008	February 2009	April 2009
X25-M 80GB	$595	$390	$320
X25-M 160GB	$945	$765	$630
X18-M 80GB	NA	NA	$340
X25-E 32GB	$575	$415	$390
X25-E 64GB	NA	$795	$795

DailyTech - Intel Cuts SSD Prices, Makes More 1.8-Inch SSDs for Netbooks and Small Laptops

Office 2007 SP2 Released

Microsoft releases the second service pack for Office 2007

Earlier this month, DailyTech reported that Microsoft had plans to release Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 sometime this month. Just as promised, Microsoft today delivered Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007 to the masses.

Service Pack 2 brings a number of bugfixes while at the same time boosting reliability and performance of core applications. Service Pack 2 also includes the ability to natively save documents in PDF and ODF file formats.

Jane Liles, Microsoft’s group program manager for Office Sustained Engineering, had this to say regarding the specific improvements to the Outlook mail application, “Outlook is where a large percentage of our users spend the majority of their work time. It’s critical that the application provide the experience that they expect and need to get their work done.”

“Outlook 2007 SP2 is 26 percent faster than its predecessor on a set of common e-mail tasks and is even faster, 35 percent, with larger mailboxes,” Liles continued. “Users will experience considerable responsiveness and speed improvements on common, day-to-day operations like launching, synchronizing and searching. We were excited to be able to act on as much of the customer feedback as we did.”

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is available as a direct download from Microsoft’s website – it weighs in a hefty 290 MB.

DailyTech - Office 2007 SP2 Released

Cablevision Offers 101 Mbps Internet Access Plan

Cablevision also doubles bandwidth of free Wi-Fi offering

Power internet users almost always seem to crave higher download speeds. The faster things can be downloaded from the internet, the faster the content can be enjoyed by consumers. Internet speeds in the U.S. are commonly much slower than speeds offered in other countries, but some service providers are working to significantly increase the speeds available to consumers in America.

Cablevision has announced that it will be debuting a new super-fast internet access plan for its customers in some areas. The service will offer enough bandwidth to download a full-length HD movie in less than 10 minutes. The service will offer peak download speeds of up to 101 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 15Mbps.

Cablevision told Reuters that the goal of new service was to allow it to better compete with the fast offerings from Verizon's FiOS service. The downside to such a fast internet connection is that the plan is expensive. Reuters reports that the 101 Mbps offering will cost nearly $100 per month. However, that price makes it cheaper than Comcast's 50 Mbps offering that costs $139 per month and fast offerings from other providers.

Reuters reports that Cablevision plans to roll the service out to its customers starting May 11. The new plan will replace the company's current top offering featuring downloads speeds of 15 Mbps for about $50 per month.

Todd Mitchell, an analyst from Kaufman Brothers, told Reuters, "Right now the real demand for 50 to 100 megabits is pretty limited. But over the next two to three years, the number of video applications we all use will grow exponentially so it will become a necessary level of service."

A bigger question in many minds is will consumers be willing or able to pay $100 per month for internet access during one of the worst economic periods in many years. Other analysts say that cable operators are walking a fine line with super-fast internet offerings. Cable companies risk damaging their core video offerings by providing customers with too much bandwidth according to some analysts.

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said, "The cable operators are trying to walk a fine line. They don't want to provide so much bandwidth that they foster the means to bypass their core service."

Cablevision also announced that it would be doubling the speed of its wireless Internet connection to 3Mbps using Wi-Fi. The company offers this service for free to consumers in certain locations.

DailyTech - Cablevision Offers 101 Mbps Internet Access Plan

Firefox 3.0.10, 3.5 Beta released

Mozilla has released two significant browser updates in the last 24 hours. First up, Firefox 3.0.10 is a minor update to the stable version of Firefox, fixing some security and stability issues.

The more exciting update is the release of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. This is the first version of Firefox to use the new 3.5 version number. Up until now the betas were labeled 3.1, but Mozilla decided that the next version of Firefox represented a big enough change from Firefox 3 to warrant a bigger name change.

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 includes a number of new features, including support for the Gecko 1.91 rendering engine, a new private browsing mode (which deletes all cookies, history, and other data when you're done with your browsing session), and support for location aware browsing using geolocation web standards. There's also better support for JavaScript, which makes many web applications appear to fly by at lightning speed.

Firefox 3.0.10 should be available as an automatic update. You can download Firefox 3.5 beta 4 from the Firefox beta page.

Firefox 3.0.10, 3.5 Beta released

GameFly Accuses USPS of Breaking Discs, Favoring Netflix, Blockbuster

GameFly and USPS are at odds, and could go to court

Video game rental service GameFly and the United States Postal Service (USPS) could be headed to court over accusations that USPS breaks thousands of game discs each year, and offers preferential treatment to Netflix and Blockbuster.

GameFly claims it sends 590,000 games to its subscribers each month and receives 510,000 of the games back.  Around one or two percent of the total games sent each month are reportedly broken by USPS.

Ars Technica estimates that GameFly could be losing up to $295,000 per month in broken video games, if each game costs $50 to replace and one percent of all games each month are broken.

The video game rental service filed an official complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission, accusing USPS of discriminating against the company.

To help reduce the number of games damaged, GameFly wants USPS to manually sort all of the games -- rather than use the automated sorting system -- which inadvertently damages CDs.

GameFly also believes USPS favors Netflix and Blockbuster over its service, as both companies send out a larger amount of discs.

"Until recently, none of the larger-volume DVD rental companies offered video games," said GameFly in the complaint.  "On February 11, 2009, however, Blockbuster, which hitherto had offered only movie DVDs (which GameFly does not offer), announced that Blockbuster was expanding its DVD rental service to include video games in the second quarter of 2009. As a result of this initiative, GameFly now faces direct competition from a rival that is larger and longer established — and which, because of the preferential treatment given by the Postal Service, enjoys a substantial cost advantage in the distribution of its DVDs to consumers.”

The Postal Regulatory Commission has given USPS 30 days to file a response, and the PRC will decide whether to have a hearing or dismiss the case within 90 days.

DailyTech - GameFly Accuses USPS of Breaking Discs, Favoring Netflix, Blockbuster

Steam's Weekend Orange Box Deal Is Insane

Steam's weekend deal should take care of any leftover PC gamers who've yet to experience the glory of The Orange Box, with the whole shebang available now for 66% off.

Unless you don't have $10 to spare, there is officially no reason why you shouldn't at least own The Orange Box by the end of the weekend. $9.99 gets you Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and some cake.

Okay, I lied about the cake.

The Orange Box for $9.99 [Steam]

Kotaku - Steam's Weekend Orange Box Deal Is Insane - the orange box

Best Buy's $10 Game Sale

Next week, Best Buy will be kicking off a $10 game sale. While there will be copious amounts of crap, this list might encourage you to hit the sales bin and start digging.

Because while most games going for $10 deserve to be going for $10, you'll find a few attractive bargains (namely good, recent games) amongst them. Like the original Rock Band (disc only). Pure. Soul Calibur IV. Samba Di Amigo. Devil May Cry 4. Guitar Hero 3. And Red Alert 3.

The full list of discounted titles, courtesy of CAG, is below.

Best Buy Sale [Cheap Ass Gamer]

Kotaku - Best Buy's $10 Game Sale - Best Buy

Pirate Bay Trial Judge Admits He Was Member of Copyright Protection Org

Pirate Bay admins' lawyer demands a retrial

Last week, the trial of four admins from The Pirate Bay, the world's largest torrent site, concluded.  The result was a stunning defeat for the pirates, with a guilty verdict and a sentence of over $3M USD in damages (to be paid to Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures) and a year in jail.

Now new revelations have surfaced.  It turns out the judge presiding over the trial, Judge Tomas Norstrom, was a member of two Swedish copyright protection groups.  He confirmed his affiliation this week, which first surfaced in Swedish Radio reports.

The affiliation represents a relatively clear conflict of interest, given that the prosecution lawyers consisted of three lawyers of similar affiliations.  Peter Althin, who represented Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde in the case, is demanding a retrial.  He states, "This is completely new to me. It is reasonable that we should have known about this before.  It is a clear case of bias."

After successful actions against Kazaa and Grokster, two popular P2P clients, copyright lawyers are eager to trying to take down The Pirate Bay, which boasts over 22 million users.  And it appears they had a fully loaded deck to do it with the trial of the administrators, as they had control of the Judge and the prosecution.

All four defendants will appeal the guilty verdict Friday.  It is likely that all of them will request a retrial as part of that appeal.
Judge Nordstrom, meanwhile, defends his record, claiming he was completely unbiased.  He admits he is a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright and Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.  He also admits he worked with Monica Wadsted, who represented the American movie industry in the trial, in resolving internet domain name disputes.  Despite these close ties, though he insists the trial was clean.  He states, "I don't think there are any circumstances that have made me biased in this case."

Meanwhile, Pirate Bay ringleader Peter "brokep" Sunde was quick to poke fun at the judge's affiliation, calling it "quite remarkable".  He sums up the trial, in comments to the AP, in one word -- a "farce".

DailyTech - Pirate Bay Trial Judge Admits He Was Member of Copyright Protection Org

Windows 7 RC 7100 Completed, Distributed

New build hasn't been leaked to torrents -- yet

Microsoft's Windows 7 is perhaps one of the most hotly anticipated tech products of the year.  Its beta builds have thus far showcased both polish and Microsoft's willingness to improve and take constructive criticism.  Microsoft has over 2,000 planned bug fixes for the Release Candidate phase, and recent builds have given users just a taste of the promising new OS's potential.

Hot on the heels of the leak of RC build 7077 to the torrent world earlier this month, Microsoft has delivered a major milestone build to OEM partners and TAP gold customers.  Microsoft reportedly compiled the new build, 7100.0.winmain_win7rc.090421-1700 (build 7100, for short), on Tuesday, and has already began distribution.

While some are likely eagerly awaiting the build to hit torrents, for home testing, Microsoft may actually beat leakers to the punch.  Microsoft announced via its Partners page plans to launch a semi-public distribution of the release candidate by May 5th to MSDN/TechNet customers.  The official release will invariably also be shared by these customers over torrent.  The 7100 build seems a likely target for the release.

There's potential, though, that the posting could be a mistake, as a Microsoft Online Chat Concierge spokesperson commented, "Currently the Windows 7 RC has not been available through the TechNet subscription yet, only the Microsoft OEM partners such as Dell, Siemens are taking part in the RC's this period of test."

Regardless, whenever DailyTech get its hands on release candidate 7100, a features update piece can be expected.  Until then, like the rest of community, we have to wait and see.

DailyTech - Windows 7 RC 7100 Completed, Distributed

Discovery of Earth-mass Planet Looms

The discovery of the lightest exoplanet ever found, less than twice the mass of the Earth, has electrified a week-long meeting on astronomy and space science in Europe.

The stunning finding was made by a team headed by Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory. The icing on the cake is a related discovery that a previously discovered "super-Earth" orbiting the same star appears to reside in the habitable zone.

The finding portends the discovery of a true Earth-mass planet, which could come in about two years, Mayor said.

Mayor made the very first discovery of an exoplanet, a Jupiter-sized world that orbits the star 51 Pegasi, in 1994.  Among his many planet discoveries since then at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, Mayor has made a specialty of observing the star Gliese 581.  Located 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra ("the Scales"), Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star with only one-third of the mass of our sun.

Two years ago, Mayor discovered a planet the size of Neptune and two super-Earths orbiting this star.  The newly discovered planet, named Gliese 581 e, is now the fourth known planet in this solar system and the lightest, weighing in at only 1.94 Earth masses. It flies round the star at dizzying speed, taking just 3.15 days to complete an orbit. "The surprise for me was to discover a planet with by far the lowest mass seen to date," says Mayor.

This new planet orbits so close to the star that its water would have boiled away long ago. It is therefore not in the habitable zone – the region of a solar system where water can stay liquid on the surface of a rocky planet, and, consequently, where scientists expect life can occur.  In our solar system, the habitable zone is roughly between the orbits of Venus and Mars (with Earth sitting not quite in the middle). 

In finding the new planet, Mayor has been able to more accurately determine the orbit for the outermost planet, Gliese 581 d.  One of the super-Earths in the solar system, this planet is closer to the host star than was thought when it was discovered in 2007. And that provided the second great surprise.  "It is the only (Earth-like) exoplanet found inside the habitable water zone of the parent star," says Mayor. 

Gliese 581 d is 7 Earth-masses, and team member Stephane Udry says the planet is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material.  "We can speculate that it is an icy planet that has migrated closer to the star," he says. At the European meeting, Mayor added the latest news indicated, "No icebergs, but there may be an ocean at the surface, meaning this is a new class of ocean planet."

To detect exoplanets, Mayor's team studies a star's radial velocity, in which the tiny tugs exerted by orbiting exoplanets produce a complex wobble in the star. This wobble can be analyzed to learn about properties of the planets in the solar system.  The velocity of a star with multiple planets has to be followed for several years to discover the different properties of its orbiting planets, and this requires instrumentation that is extremely stable from year to year -- one of the big challenges in detecting exoplanets through the radial velocity technique.

The team's observing program began back in 2004 with a sample of 400 sun-like stars.

Mayor is now scooping up small exoplanets that have been missed by a rival search technique (called transit photometry) which involves measuring the tiny fall in a star's magnitude when an exoplanet passes between the star and the Earth. Both techniques, transit photometry and radial velocity, are strongly biased to catch giant planets with the mass of Jupiter or more, as well as smaller planets that orbit very close to their star. But to find small planets orbiting within a star's habitable zone, Mayor's approach now seems to have the edge.

The team has found that one-third (30%) of exoplanet systems discovered to date include small bodies. "We have discovered a new category of small exoplanets," says Mayor. "Within a couple of years we will drive down our lower limit of detection to the mass of the Earth. The next challenge after that is to detect a twin of the Earth in the habitable zone of a solar-type star."

The next stage for Mayor's team is to migrate the detection technology from the current 3.6-meter telescope to ESO's 8-meter Very Large Telescope in order to improve the precision of observations. After that, Mayor looks forward to using the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), a 42-meter eye-on-the-sky that is planned to be operating by 2018. 

Currently in the later stages of design, this facility will be capable of directly imaging larger exoplanets, and possibly will be able to search their atmospheres for biosignatures. E-ELT will answer fundamental questions on the formation and evolution of exoplanets, bringing us one step closer to answering the question: are we alone?

SPACE.com -- Discovery of Earth-mass Planet Looms

Firefox 3.0.9

The award-winning Firefox Web browser has been upgraded to v3.0.9

Here's what's new:

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Many users experienced an issue where a corrupt local database caused Firefox to "lose" its stored cookies. (bug 470578)
• Fixed an issue where, starting with Firefox 3.0.7, inline image attachments on popular webmail services (like AOL and AIM) would not display. (bug 482659)
• Large forms would sometimes take a long time to submit. (bug 426991)
• In certain cases, new windows would not have proper focus. (bug 446568)

News source: Official website
Download: Firefox 3.0.9

Firefox 3.0.9

Warner reintegrates HD DVD faithful with Red2Blu trade-in program

U.S. HD DVD fans that passed up Best Buy's offer of $3 per disc, or just those who stocked up on cheap movies after the format gave up the fight have another option coming from Warner Bros. Send in the cover art sleeve (keep the disc) including UPC from your HD DVD case (plus $4.95 per movie and $6.95 / $8.95 per order S&H) and it will send you back a brand new Blu-ray copy. There's a few other restrictions, like 1 copy per movie and 25 different movies per household, but the biggest decision is likely to be whether giving up your precious I Am Legend sleeve is worth the trade, hit up Red2Blu.com for all the details and necessary forms. It seems to us like a decent offer to make HD DVD owners whole, we'd be surprised if Paramount and Universal came through with similar plans.

Warner reintegrates HD DVD faithful with Red2Blu trade-in program

Bluetooth 3.0 Specifications Announced

Bluetooth 3.0 officially launched

The latest version of Bluetooth, Bluetooth 3.0 + HS, was officially launched during a recent meeting among the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG).

Based off of the 802.11 protocol, Bluetooth 3.0 will increase transfer speeds from 3Mbps up to an impressive 23Mbps, according to Bluetooth supporters.  The technology is based on Wi-Fi standards and offers power-saving benefits that weren't available with Bluetooth 2.1.

"Utilizing the 802.11 radio was a natural choice as it provides efficiencies for both our members and consumers -- members get more function out of the two radios they are already including in devices, and consumers with Bluetooth 3.0 HS products will get faster exchange of information without changing how they connect," Bluetooth SIG director Michael Foley said in a statement.  "We are excited to expand the possibilities of the PAN."

During the announcement, Bluetooth 3.0 is expected to be used to help transfer large amounts of information between PCs and media devices, with wireless syncing available.  Bluetooth has mainly been used by mobile phones, but the faster speeds should lead to Bluetooth adoption with more camcorders, TVs, Blu-ray players, cameras, and other consumer devices.

Even though Bluetooth 3.0 is out and about, many manufacturers are just now catching up to the Bluetooth 2.0 standard.  Furthermore, no Bluetooth 3.0 devices are available on the consumer at the moment, and won't begin shipping until Q3 this year, if that early.

Tech journalists and analysts long-anticipated the launch of Bluetooth 3.0, and have high expectations of what it will be able to do in the future.  Users will be able to transfer music library, DVDs, and photos all in a matter of seconds, a Bluetooth SIG statement said last week.

Foley said there could be a handful of Bluetooth 3.0 devices in time for the 2009 holiday shopping, but officials don't expect a significant amount of products until next year.

DailyTech - Bluetooth 3.0 Specifications Announced

Battlefield 2 v1.50 Beta Patch Released

DICE's long-awaited Battlefield 2 v1.50 beta patch is now available on FileShack.

 

Requiring v1.41 to be installed, the incremental update brings the new "Blue Pearl" map to the multiplayer shooter, along with better Vista support, widescreen support, compatibility with Novint's three-dimensional Falcon controller, and more.

FEATURES
• Additional support for Windows Vista.
• Added Highway Tampa as a required map.
• Added a new map called Operation Blue Pearl.
• Added support for Widescreen resolutions
• Added support for the Novint Falcon controller - www.novint.com
GAMEPLAY TWEAKS
• Changes made to both the J10 and F35B to make them more balanced. Please note that the J10 is a superior dogfighter to the F35B and as such these two aircraft will never be equally matched.
• AA targeting tweaked to make it more effective.
• Added checks to prevent "runway grieving".
• Various changes made to prevent cheating.
• Tweaked the hit detection, hits will be more accurate to the model.
• Increased the time to go prone after jumping from 0.3 seconds to 0.7 seconds
• Fixed G36E HUD during sprinting to match other weapons.

Battlefield 2 v1.50 Beta Patch Released - Shacknews

LEGO Rock Band Officially Announced, Includes Europe's 'The Final Countdown'

Confirming the long-running rumors, publishers Warner Bros. and MTV Games today announced that LEGO Rock Band will hit PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and DS in "holiday 2009."

LEGO Star Wars developer TT Games is handling the three consoles versions "in partnership" with Rock Band series creator Harmonix, while the Nintendo DS release "will be co-developed by TT Games and Harmonix in partnership with [Rock Band Unplugged PSP developer] Backbone Entertainment."

 

A few tracks were revealed:

• Blur: "Song 2"
• Carl Douglas: "Kung Fu Fighting"
• Europe: "The Final Countdown"
• Good Charlotte: "Boys and Girls"
• Pink: "So What"

"LEGO Rock Band combines the multiplayer music experience of Rock Band with the fun, customization and humor of the LEGO videogame franchise packed with brilliant chart-topping songs and classic favorites suitable for younger audiences," said WB.

As with past Rock Band title, the multi-instrument music game will be compatible with Rock Band-branded peripherals as well as those of other music games.

No word yet if, as with Harmonix's various Rock Band Track Packs, it will include a disc export feature that brings the included songs into other Rock Band games.

The game is set to embrace the "imaginative settings that the LEGO world offers," with concert venues ranging from stadiums to "fantasy locations on Earth and beyond."

"LEGO Rock Band is built around the same values of imagination and family-friendly creative role play that is present in other LEGO videogames," said LEGO Group VP Henrik Taudorf Lorensen. "It will deliver innovative new elements of game play that complement the fun of the Rock Band experience."

LEGO Rock Band Officially Announced, Includes Europe's 'The Final Countdown' - Shacknews

Team Fortress 2 Patch Hints At New Headgear, Huge Gameplay Changes

The most recent Team Fortress 2 update brings with it updates that may radically change the way we play the game, including the fascinating—but still unannounced—addition of headgear to classes. Oh, it gets much better.

While the official Valve change log rather mundanely notes that the Team Fortress 2 team has "reworked the character loadout screens to support future features," it doesn't specify what the pictured "head" slot is for. Fortunately, some of the game's data files may give us a very clear picture about what we'll see on each class' noggins. They may also lay out the future of TF2 class changes.

Each class appears to be receiving new headgear, which may or may not have an impact on gameplay. The Heavy looks like he's getting a football helmet, with the Demoman getting a 'Fro, as they call it. The Engineer's getting a mining helmet, and the Scout's getting a batter's helmet.

The most intriguing, though, is the Sniper's "tooth belt."

The same documents also list other loadout slots beyond primary, secondary and melee weapons, including an open slot for grenades, PDAs and buildings. While that could mean that grenades could be returning to Team Fortress, those slots could be Demoman and Engineer class specific slots.

But the biggest potential game changer includes what appear to be Diablo II-like item attributes that modify the way weapons behave. These include variations on things like clip size, firing speed, critical hits, chance to slow targets on hit, Ubercharge rate and much more. Game files even describe these as having levels, naming weapons in the style of "Level 4 Medigun of X ÜberCharge rate."

If these randomized weapons drop from downed enemies, it could make the game very interesting.

The addition of all these potential loadout items may explain why Valve just added an option to permanently delete an unlocked weapon (or item) from one's inventory in the latest update. The developer may be limiting the number of weapons and items a player can carry in his "backpack."

We'll also note that these may be work-in-progress updates, things that may change over time or may never see the light of day. We've contacted Valve to see if the company can explain these changes further.

Kotaku - Team Fortress 2 Patch Hints At New Headgear, Huge Gameplay Changes - Valve

Rare Sight: Twin Shuttles at Launch Pad for Last Time

For what may be only the fourth time in history, two space shuttles sat exposed on NASA's two launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this weekend. The rare sight came to a close Monday as each shuttle was covered by rotating sections of their pads' structures.

As spectacular as it may have been, NASA hopes it'll be the last such

simultaneous view for the shuttles, although they have had that expectation before.

That there are two shuttles on two pads, visible or not, is in itself rare, occurring only 18 times over the past three decades. A prior double shuttle view in September 2008 was intended to be the last in the vehicles' history but a failure aboard their mission's target resulted in the launch delay that led to this weekend's repeat rollout.

Double shuttles for Hubble, again

Space shuttle Atlantis was already on Pad 39A on Friday when its sister ship Endeavour arrived at 39B, 8,000 feet away, duplicating the scene from last fall.

Atlantis is scheduled to launch with the STS-125 crew on May 12 to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The unexpected failure of the observatory's science data system in September resulted in NASA standing down to give HST's managers the time to prepare a replacement.

In the meantime, Atlantis was rolled back from the launch pad to make way for two other missions to fly first to the International Space Station (ISS). Atlantis returned to the pad on the morning of March 31.

Because STS-125 is not flying to the ISS, its crew does not have the added protection of taking safe haven on the station should Atlantis be damaged during flight. To offset that risk, NASA decided to ready a second shuttle on the second pad as a rescue ship, to launch as needed.

Endeavour was to serve that role when STS-125 was first targeted for an October launch. After the HST developed its delay-inducing problem, NASA released Endeavour to launch on its own STS-126 mission, which last November flew to the ISS to deliver supplies.

Shuttle Discovery, the third orbiter remaining in NASA's fleet, also serviced the station in the interim, completing the outpost's backbone truss and deploying the last set of its power-providing solar array wings during the STS-119 mission last month.

Endeavour, now being readied to return to the station on STS-127, was rolled out to Pad 39B on Friday morning to again first stand poised in support of STS-125. If Atlantis flies safely, Endeavour will be moved to 39A in late May, marking the last time in history that a space shuttle was on 39B.

With the shuttles scheduled to be retired next year, the pads are to be converted to launch the next generation of NASA crewed vehicles, the Constellation program's Ares rockets, with work already underway to modify Pad 39B.

Fleeting view of two in the fleet

To protect the orbiters and prepare them for their launch, a 102 foot long by 130 foot high section of the pad called the rotating service structure (RSS) is moved along rails until it covers the orbiter. The RSS is usually only opened just after a shuttle arrives at the pad, when the payload arrives to be installed inside the orbiter's bay, or just prior to launch.

This weekend's view of Atlantis and Endeavour was the result of overlapping schedules. Endeavour arrived at its pad just two days before Atlantis' payload was rolled out to 39A.

In addition to affording a photo opportunity for the press, the exposed shuttles were also visible to tourists lucky enough to schedule a trip to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex this past weekend, as well as by NASA employees and their families given the fortunate timing of a long-planned open house on Saturday.

As a result, this most recent and likely last view of sister shuttles on their pads may have also been the most well viewed in history, with over 50,000 having been expected for just Saturday's "Family Day" alone.

Before this past weekend's and last September's views of Atlantis and Endeavour, photographs have been identified depicting two previous similar occurrences in September 1990 and August 1994, showing Columbia with Discovery and Discovery with Endeavour, respectively. It's possible that other dual views took place, as NASA's records only indicate when two space shuttles have stood on two pads without notating their service structures' position.

SPACE.com -- Rare Sight: Twin Shuttles at Launch Pad for Last Time

Windows 7 RC to be released publicly on May 5

Ok gang, it looks like we may finally have an honest-to-goodness release date for the Windows 7 RC: May 5, 2009.

A page has been posted on Microsoft's partner portal which tells MSDN and Technet subscribers that they can download the RC now, though that doesn't appear to be true just yet. Clicking through to the downloads page still only displays the Windows 7 Beta downloads.

It could turn out to be another gaff like the one last month. However, there's no screwy publication date this time, so it may just be that the partner downloads are due in the very near future. The page includes another reminder that the RC is not a finished product and restates that the goal is to both showcase what's coming in Windows 7 as well as continue real-world testing.

There's been speculation that the RC build may include a significant change to the Windows 7 UI in order to generate some added excitement. We'll have to wait patiently to find out if that's true, but no doubt there will be screenshots or an ISO leak soon after the download is made available.

If you missed out on the beta and aren't excited about downloading an unofficial file via some torrent site, you'll soon have the chance to get your hands on a genuine Microsoft download once again.

Windows 7 RC to be released publicly on May 5

Oracle to Buy Sun Microsystems

IBM's loss is Oracle's gain

Sun has been shopping around for a buyer to help it turn around its falling profits and margins for a while. IBM and Sun were in talks over a potential deal -- IBM offered Sun $9.40 per share and the offer was met with resistance by Sun's board.

That resistance led IBM to walk away from the negotiations. The Wall Street Journal reports that Oracle has now agreed to purchase Sun for $9.50 per share. The value of the transaction is $5.6 billion and excludes Sun's cash debt. Sun reportedly had about $2.6 billion in cash and short-term investments and $700 million in long-term debt as of December 28, 2008.

A Sun/Oracle merger makes sense with Sun servers being sold with Oracle database software for a long time. Buying Sun will allow Oracle to offer complete solutions of hardware and software to businesses looking for a one-stop shop.

Other than the issue with IBM offering less than Sun's board wanted for the company, reports had IBM being concerned about antitrust issues stemming from the purchase. Oracle is believed to have less of an antitrust issue since it has fewer businesses that compete directly with Sun.

Oracle executives believe that the purchase will pay off quickly for the company despite the fact that Sun has been posting losses for the last three quarters. Sun is expected to add more than $1.5 billion to Oracles operating profit excluding charges and other items in the first year with that number growing to over $2 billion the second year after the purchase.

The Wall Street Journal reports that some analysts were stunned by the purchase. AMR Research analyst Bruce Richardson said, "The last thing you expected was a database-software company to buy a hardware customer base." 

DailyTech - Oracle to Buy Sun Microsystems

NBCOlympics.com using Silverlight 3, Smooth Streaming for Winter Olympics video

The Beijing Olympics broadcast benefited greatly from high quality streams available on the NBCOlympics.com website, and it looks like the 2010 Games in Vancouver will be no different. To that end, Microsoft's released server side enhancements like Smooth Streaming technology for adaptive streaming with Silverlight to keep the video streams moving smoothly, and even enable DVR-like features in a live stream without requiring dedicated video servers, all so viewers can get smooth 720p throughout the event. By then Silverlight 3 should be out of beta, which promises support for up to 1080p resolution, native playback of MP4 formats like h.264 and hardware graphics acceleration. Honestly we'd expect nothing less, and while word is CTV, HSN and others will be among the first to take advantage, we're waiting for Netflix to pick up the baton and deliver browser based PQ that rises to the level of Xbox 360 and other players, plus more HD.

NBCOlympics.com using Silverlight 3, Smooth Streaming for Winter Olympics video

Battlefield Heroes Open Beta Set for Summer

The open beta for DICE's free-to-play, micro-transaction and ad-supported Battlefield title will begin this summer, according to EA.

Publisher EA had previously expected Battlefield Heroes to be released no later than March 31.

 

A large closed beta for the game is currently running. To appeal for a key, hit up the game's official site.

Battlefield Heroes Open Beta Set for Summer - Shacknews

Swedish Court Sends Pirate Bay Leaders to Brig, Takes Their Bounty

Despite a spirited fight, Sweden's most high profile pirates get sent to the jail

The Pirate Bay was the world's largest torrent site; feeding millions of users downloading legally obtained and illegally infringed works.  It was the latter that cause the admins’ home nation of Sweden to drop the hammer and announce conspiracy charges and other charges against the feisty pirates. The parties involved included Peter “brokep” Sunde Kolmisoppi, Gottfrid “anakata” Svartholm, Fredrik “TiAMO” Neij, as well as Carl Lundström, who hosted the site via his company, Rix Telecom.

The groups once had dreams of founding their own country, but the proud pirates fell, facing the legal fight of their lives.  From telling the lawyers of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) who were assisting Swedish authorities to "go screw themselves" to releasing intriguing figures that 80 percent of their torrents were legal, the pirates put up a spirited fight indeed.  For a time, it seemed they had the prosecution on the ropes -- they had to alter their charges against the group, faced with difficulty proving their current case.

However, in the end it was not enough, and the Stockholm district court found the four pirates guilty of assisting copyright infringement sending them to a year of hard time in jail.  To add insult to injury, the court also ordered them to give up their bounty, ordering SEK 30 million ($3.59M USD) in damages.

The three week trial concluded with a somewhat surprising victory for the prosecution.  The verdict stated that the Pirate Bay leadership was guilty of "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws."

The Swedish officials have discovered that their plans to place the feisty group behind bars might be put on hold though, as the group plans an appeal.  The Pirate Bay states, "This will not be the final decision, only the first before the losing party will appeal. It will have no real effect on anything besides setting the tone for the debate."

Mr. Kolmisoppi (brokep) twittered this morning urging Pirate Bay fans to stay calm, and noted that there would be no interruption in their service or their fight against the charges.  He wrote, "Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file-sharing whatsoever."

The leadership held a special press conference for the media at the Museum of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.  At the conference were Rasmus Fleischer of Piratbyrån, Sara Sajjad of Piratbyrån, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (aka Anakata), Peter Sunde (aka Brokep) and Magnus Eriksson of Piratbyrån. Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) and the fourth defendant Carl Lundström were not in attendance.

A defiant Mr. Warg challenged Sweden's leadership to try to stop the site, stating, "What are they going to do? They have already failed to take the site down once. Let them fail again.  It has its own life without us."

As to the order to surrender his supposed bounty, he states, "I already have more debt in Sweden than I will ever be able to pay off. I don’t even live here. They are welcome to send me a bill. I will frame it and put it on the wall."

Asked if he viewed his campaign as fight for technology, Mr. Kolmisoppi responded, "I think it is something in between actually. We have a personal liability for this, we have a personal risk which has some impact on our feelings. But definitely it’s not defending the technology, it’s more like defending the idea of the technology and that’s probably the most important thing in this case - the political aspect of letting the technology be free and not controlled by an entity which doesn’t like technology."

DailyTech - Swedish Court Sends Pirate Bay Leaders to Brig, Takes Their Bounty

Planet-Hunting Spacecraft Beams Home First Images

The planet-seeking Kepler spacecraft has beamed home its first images of a patch of the sky where NASA hopes to find Earth-like planets circling distant, alien stars.

Some 14 million stars are estimated to lurk within

the first views from Kepler, which NASA released Thursday. The images reveal a swath of stars between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra that fill an expansive area of our Milky Way galaxy which, when seen from Earth, is about the size of human hand held up against the night sky at arm's length.

"It's thrilling to see this treasure trove of stars," said William Borucki, Kepler's science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "We expect to find hundreds of planets circling those stars, and for the first time, we can look for Earth-size planets in the habitable zones around other stars like the sun."

The so-called "habitable zone" around a star is a belt in which liquid water could exist on the surface in lakes, rivers or oceans. Too close to its stellar parent and a planet would be too hot, while an orbit too far out would yield only a frozen world, NASA scientists have said.

The first images from Kepler released by NASA include views of its entire target zone, as well as up-close shots that zoom in on only a fraction of the full star field. One view includes a cluster of stars some 13,000 light-years from Earth known as NGC 6791, while another image includes a star called Tres-2, which is already known to harbor a massive Jupiter-like planet close by.

"Kepler's first glimpse of the sky is awe-inspiring," said Lia LaPiana, NASA's Kepler's program executive at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "To be able to see millions of stars in a single snapshot is simply breathtaking."

NASA launched the $600 million Kepler spacecraft last month to sift through those millions of targets for 100,000 pre-selected candidate stars that may have Earth-sized planets around them. Those target stars sit between 600 and 3,000 light-years from Earth. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo., and is slated to last at least 3 1/2 years.

At Kepler's heart is a 95-megapixel spacecraft, the largest ever launched into space, which the spacecraft will use to hunt for Earth-like planets. Astronomers have discovered more than 300 extrasolar planets to date, but most of them are massive gas giants the size of Jupiter or larger.

Kepler spacecraft is expected to identify new extrasolar planets by casting an unblinking stare at its target star field. Its sensitive camera will record the tell-tale dip in light created by a planet as it crosses in front of its parent star as seen from Earth. While researchers expect to discover a wide range of new planets with Kepler, it's those rocky worlds the size of Earth that they are most eager to find.

"Everything about Kepler has been optimized to find Earth-size planets," said James Fanson, Kepler's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Our images are road maps that will allow us, in a few years, to point to a star and say a world like ours is there."

Last week, the spacecraft popped the protective lid off its delicate telescope optics and photometer to prepare for its planet search. Mission managers and scientists plan to spend the next few weeks calibrating Kepler's photometer and alignment before beginning their hunt for Earth-like worlds in earnest.

"We've spent years designing this mission, so actually being able to see through its eyes is tremendously exciting," said Eric Bachtell, the lead Kepler systems engineer at Ball Aerospace.

SPACE.com -- Planet-Hunting Spacecraft Beams Home First Images

Firefox 3.5 beta 4 coming soon

Mozilla is inching closer to the release of Firefox 3.5, which includes a faster Javascript engine, a private browsing mode, faster page rendering, and changes to the way tabs are handled. Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is due to be released within the next week or so.
If you're not ready to test out pre-release software yet, Mozilla should be releasing Firefox 3.0.9 next week as well. That version will likely offer bug fixes and security updates but no major new features.
Or if you want to live on the bleeding edge, you can always try the early builds of Firefox 3.6, also referred to as Firefox.Next. Goals for that version include faster startup times, improved add-on and customization support, and blurring the distinction between desktop and web apps. You can download the latest nightly builds of Firefox.Next from Mozilla's FTP site.

Firefox 3.5 beta 4 coming soon

Wii MotionPlus and Wii Sports Resort Confirmed for the United States

Nintendo confirms the release date and the price for the United States

The release date and price for the Wii MotionPlus and Wii Sports Resort have been confirmed for the United States market. According to Kotaku, the Wii MotionPlus goes on sale on June 8 for $19.99 USD. Wii Sports Resort will be released on July 26 bundled with the Wii MotionPlus add-on for $49.99 USD.

The Wii MotionPlus is a hardware add-on for the Wii-mote controller that attaches to the bottom of the controller and enhances the controller’s ability to reflect motions in 3-D space. The device was announced back in July 2008 and is finally ready for release this year.

In Nintendo executive Cammie Dunaway’s own words, “Wii MotionPlus represents a new evolution in video game control. The variety of fun games in Wii Sports Resort show off its incredible precision. Developers around the world are busy working on new ways to incorporate Wii MotionPlus controls into inventive experiences for consumers."

Wii Sports Resort is the sequel to the most successful video game of all time Wii Sports. As of January 2009 Wii Sports surpassed Super Mario Brothers selling over 40.24 million copies. Wii Sports Resort was developed with the Wii MotionPlus accessory in mind and offers players the opportunity to participate in a variety of outdoor activities in a virtual world. Sample activities include Sword Play, Power Cruising (racing a water scooter) and Disc Dog, which involves accurately tossing a disc to a cute dog.

Kotaku points out the full Wii experience will be more expensive than before with the Wii Remote costing $39.99 USD, the Nunchaku costing $19.99 USD and the Wii MotionPlus costing $19.99, the total will fall just short of $80 USD.

DailyTech - Wii MotionPlus and Wii Sports Resort Confirmed for the United States

Black Hole Creates Spectacular Light Show

A jet of gas spewing from a huge black hole has mysteriously brightened, flaring to 90 times its normal glow.

For seven years the Hubble Space Telescope has been watching the jet, which pours out of the

supermassive black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy. It has photographed the strange phenomenon fading and then brightening, with a peak that even outshines M87's brilliant core.

Scientists have dubbed the enigmatic bright blob HST-1, and are so far at a loss to explain its weird behavior.

"I did not expect the jet in M87 or any other jet powered by accretion onto a black hole to increase in brightness in the way that this jet does," said astronomer Juan Madrid of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who conducted the Hubble study. "It grew 90 times brighter than normal. But the question is, does this happen to every single jet or active nucleus, or are we seeing some odd behavior from M87?"

Many supermassive black holes have jets of material that spray out perpendicularly from the donut-shaped ring of matter falling onto the black hole. These beams of hot gas are thought to result from magnetic field lines that are twisted by the black hole's mass, and propel charged particles outward.

But most rays do not appear to blaze up with such extreme intensity as HST-1. Scientists aren't sure if it is an exceptional case, or if it represents a normal event for black hole jets, which are still not very well understood. In this case, the bright knot of HST-1 is about 214 light-years from the M87 galaxy's core

To learn more about this bizarre light show, Madrid analyzed the seven years' worth of Hubble images of the jet in ultraviolet light to capture changes in HST-1's behavior over time. He also compared the Hubble data to photos of the jet taken in X-rays by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and in radio by other telescopes.

Madrid found that between 1999 and 2005, the blob continually brightened. By May 2005, HST-1 was 90 times brighter than it was in 1999. After that, it seemed to fade, and then intensified again in November 2006.

"By watching the outburst over several years, I was able to follow the brightness and see the evolution of the flare over time," Madrid says. "We are lucky to have telescopes like Hubble and Chandra, because without them we would see the increase in brightness in the core of M87, but we would not know where it was coming from."

More data will be needed to solve the mystery of why HST-1 acts the way it does.

"We hope the observations will yield some theories that will give us some good explanations as to the mechanism that is causing the flaring," Madrid says. "Astronomers would like to know if this is an intrinsic instability of the jet when it plows its way out of the galaxy, or if it is something else."

This strange case could provide a unique opportunity to learn more about black hole jets in distant galaxies, which are difficult to study because they are so far away. M87 is located 54 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster.

Madrid's study is detailed in the April 2009 issue of the Astronomical Journal.

SPACE.com -- Black Hole Creates Spectacular Light Show

Call of Duty: World at War PC Patch 1.4 Arrives Bearing Bonus Free Map Pack

Treyarch has released a new PC patch for Call of Duty: World of War, polishing up multiplayer and bringing Map Pack 1 for free, courtesy of Intel. Get it at FileShack.

 

The map pack arrived on consoles last month costing $10--a price over one million players happily paid during the first week of sale alone. Alongside three regular multiplayer maps is a new Nazi Zombies map which fleshes out the popular mode.

The full patch notes follow below:

• 3 new Multiplayer maps: Knee Deep, Nightfire, Station!
• Nazi Zombies map with more weapons, Perks-a-Cola machines, and electroshock defenses: Verruckt!
• Improved spawning logic.
• Auto balancing improvements. Players are no longer auto balanced while completing objectives.
• Mods: IWD's can be placed in the usermaps folder.
• Mods: Hold Breath / Sprint functions as intended.
• Mods: MissingAssets.csv is generated when maps are run with developer set to 1.
• Fixed lag caused by shooting at tanks.
• All rifle grenades fired during the first 15 seconds of Search & Destroy will be duds.
• Players who equip a Bouncing Betty and melee teammates in Hardcore game modes are now credited with a team kill penalty.
• Players are now deducted 200 points for team killing the bomb planter/defuser in Hardcore Search & Destroy.
• Martyrdom no longer causes direct impact deaths in Hardcore modes.
• "Bayonet jumping" has been disabled.

Call of Duty: World at War PC Patch 1.4 Arrives Bearing Bonus Free Map Pack - Shacknews

Report: Skype Founders Look to Buy Company from eBay

Skype founders want company back

Technology and internet startups often seem to come out of nowhere with meteoric success only to be snapped up by larger companies looking to make a profit from new technology. This is the circle of life online and in the technology world.

Back in 2005, eBay purchased Skype for about $1.7 billion with then CEO Meg Whitman saying that eBay believed Skype would find an audience with eBay buyers and sellers. This failed to happen and current eBay CEO John Donahoe has said that Skype has no synergies with eBay reports eWeek.

Donahoe said that eBay would do what was right for Skype and eBay -- many analysts took that statement as an indication that eBay may be interested in selling Skype. While eBay hasn’t officially stated that it is trying to sell Skype, the original founders of the Skype service, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, have reportedly contacted private equity firms in an attempt to make a bid to purchase their company back from eBay.

EBay didn’t offer comment on the rumor. Sources cited by the New York Times claim that the Skype founders are attempting to raise about $1 billion in equity from private investors to fund the purchase. An alternate method of funding the purchased according to eWeek is having eBay put up the remainder of the needed cash in the form of a seller's note in a deal that is estimated to be worth $2 billion.

Skype reportedly posted $550 million in revenue in 2008. Skype recently launched mobile software that allowed the Skype service to be used on the iPhone.

DailyTech - Report: Skype Founders Look to Buy Company from eBay

ATI Catalyst 9.4

AMD released version 9.4 of their ATI video card driver package.

These drivers include the following:

• ATI Catalyst 9.4 includes a new ATI Overdrive™ auto-tune application to accurately determine the best over-clocked engine and memory values for ATI Overdrive supported ATI Radeon™ Graphics accelerators

View: Release notes
Download: ATI Catalyst 9.4 driver

ATI Catalyst 9.4

Snipers Get Next Team Fortress 2 Class Upgrade, Looking to be 'Largest TF2 Update Yet'

After yesterday's pissy tease, Valve today confirmed that, yes, the Sniper will be the next Team Fortress 2 class to receive unlockable items and class-specific achievements.

"It's actually shaping up to be the largest TF2 update yet, with multiple new maps and a bunch of gameplay tweaks," wrote Greg Cherlin on Valve's Team Fortress blog.

 

"We've got another update in the works that should be done before the Sniper, and that one will include some new content for all classes," he added.

And while the Xbox 360 version of the colorful multiplayer shooter has still yet to receive any of the free content updates that PC gamers are enjoying, Cherlin noted that the studio is still working to bring that content to owners of Microsoft's console.

His explanation for the holdup?

The original version of TF2 in the Orange Box was very close to the Xbox's memory limit, and all the additional TF2 content we've produced has pushed well beyond it. We've found a couple of nifty ways to get back a bunch of that memory, but it's turned out to be a lot of work, and that's what most of our time is being spent on. In the meantime, we're going to get a code update out to address the server cheating that's going on.

As previously reported, the PlayStation 3 edition of TF2 will not be receiving any of the content updates as Valve does not have any PS3 programmers in-house--EA UK was responsible for porting The Orange Box to PS3, and has since moved on.

Snipers Get Next Team Fortress 2 Class Upgrade, Looking to be 'Largest TF2 Update Yet' - Shacknews

NVIDIA Forceware 182.50 WHQL

NVIDIA ForceWare software unleashes the full power and features in NVIDIA's desktop, gaming, platform, workstation, laptop, multimedia, and mobile products. Delivering a proven record of compatibility, reliability, and stability with the widest range of games and applications, ForceWare software ensures the best experience with your NVIDIA hardware.

New in this release:

• Optimized single GPU and SLI support for upcoming PC games.
• Numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release documentation notes.
• Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

Download: NVIDIA Forceware 182.50 WHQL

NVIDIA Forceware 182.50 WHQL

Mysterious Dark Matter Possibly Detected

When dark matter is destroyed, it leaves behind a burst of exotic particles, according to theory. Now scientists have found a possible signature of these remains. The discovery could help prove the existence of dark matter and reveal what it's made of.

No one knows what dark matter is, but scientists think it exists because there is not enough gravity from visible matter to explain how galaxies rotate.

An Italian satellite called PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light nuclei Astrophysics),

launched in 2006 to measure radiation in space, found an overabundance of particles called positrons, which are the antimatter counterpart to electrons (matter and antimatter annihilate each other).

This positron signature could have a variety of causes, but a prime candidate is dark matter, the intangible stuff thought to make up about 98 percent of all matter in the universe. When two dark matter particles collide they can sometimes destroy each other and release a burst of energy that includes positrons.

"PAMELA found a number of positrons much higher than expected," the mission's principal investigator Piergiorgio Picozza told SPACE.com. "Many think this could be a signal from dark matter, because for positrons this behavior fits very well with many theories of dark matter."

The finding, detailed in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature, is not a total surprise, but it could be a huge splash, if confirmed.

"This kind of signal for dark matter has been predicted as a possible leading signature for over two decades, and [the PAMELA scientists] are seeing just the kind of things one might expect," said University of Michigan astrophysicist Gordon Kane, who was not involved in the research. "There's a very good chance that this is the most important discovery in basic physics for decades."

Positrons are often created when cosmic rays interact with atoms in the gas and dust between stars. But this source cannot produce enough positrons to account for PAMELA's findings. Another possibility is that the positrons PAMELA found were produced by dense spinning stars called pulsars. To distinguish between this option and dark matter, more data will be necessary, either from PAMELA or from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launched last year.

"We hope to have detected dark matter, but now we need other verification coming from other experiments," Picozza said.

Even so, some scientists are excited to have come so close to possibly discovering the presence of dark matter, which has eluded researchers since it was first conceived in the 1930s.

Kane emphasized that the results, though still not certain, could be significant not just as proof that dark matter exists, but also for clues about what makes up this mysterious substance, which cannot be directly seen and is only detected via its gravitational tug on other things.

Kane's personal bet for the particle behind dark matter in these findings is called a wino (pronounced WEE-no) — a specific type of neutralino, which is a theorized category of particles that could exist as "supersymmetric partners" for all the Standard Model particles such as electrons, quarks, etc. The wino is the supersymmetric partner of a particle called the W boson.

"It does particularly well at producing positrons in the annihilation, and the positrons have energies that are about right for these results," Kane said in a phone interview.

If dark matter is made up of neutralinos, then dark matter particles would be their own antimatter particles, because the anti-neutralino is simply a neutralino. Thus, when two dark matter particles collide, they can self-destruct like any other interaction of matter and anti-matter.

Luckily, this does not happen very often. Dark matter particles are thought to be extremely tiny, and the chances of them hitting each other perfectly square on, and under the right conditions for destruction, are very low. This fact allows dark matter to clump together throughout the universe, scaffolding up galaxies and clusters, without destroying itself every time two dark matter particles come near each other.

Even though annihilations are rare, the positrons they produce could survive for up to a few million years, so they can stick around long enough for detectors like PAMELA to find them.

SPACE.com -- Mysterious Dark Matter Possibly Detected

Lego My MMO: A Universe of Virtual Bricks

SAN FRANCISCO — "How do we come up with a digital brick?"

There have been many games that use the Lego brand over the years, but the toys were mostly used as a clever visual style: Lego Star Wars, for example. But Mark Hansen, senior director of Lego's Digital Play studios, is tasked with coming up with a game that does what the tiny colored bricks have done for more than 70 years — unleash a player's innate creativity.

Lego Universe, to be released on PC in 2010, could change all that, merging the fast action of previous Lego titles with creative play, all in a massively multiplayer online world. I spoke with the game's creators at a downtown hotel during last week's Game Developers Conference.

"It's about playing on the floor, going virtual, then going back to the floor ... really expressing yourself and showing off," says Hansen.

Lego Universe is designed for younger players. (In case you've forgotten, Lego is technically for kids.) Hansen says the idea is to supplement, not replace, the physical play experience with a digital one.

Lego's currently available virtual playground, called Lego Factory

, is a fairly robust tool, but it doesn't quite meet the needs of the average child, Hansen says: "It's very AutoCAD-for-kids, not the best play experience."

"The vision of Lego Universe is to really experience life as a mini-figure," explains Ryan Seabury, creative director at Lego Universe developer NetDevil.

Universe will play much like your standard MMO game: There will be a story, combat and conflicts, and collectible Lego bricks that will help you customize and construct objects. I wasn't given any details about how the building process would actually work, however. All Seabury would say: "We certainly want to empower players to create what they want to create."

He says NetDevil is paying a lot of attention to things that players have expressed interest in making. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something akin to the creative Xbox 360 game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, with players combining specific types of bricks to create objects that fall into particular categories, or obey certain rules.

This is all baseless speculation on my part, but I can't think of a better way to avoid the torrent of giant, jet-propelled penises that the internet's denizens would immediately create en masse.

Lego Universe will bring together a wide variety of characters and locations. Thus far, we've seen screenshots of ninjas in their natural habitats, pirates manning their fearsome war vessels, reporters in the city covering disasters, and players out in space, customizing rocket ships.

"Players have the option of making their design unique," Seabury says. "We really wanted to (take) the next step, where we can deliver ... more customizable experiences, and start getting your own creativity and expression into it."

From what I've seen, Lego Universe is bursting with a silly, energetic charm. The mini-figures are the stars of the show, and while I didn't get to see the full game in action, I was allowed to watch the character-creation process. Mini-figs are endowed with a creative spark, a "soul" that will never die. They're also fairly exuberant: They'll start mashing the "randomize" button on their own if you take too long to begin the customization process.

Customizing a mini-fig is much like building one from parts scattered across your living room floor: Snap on a hairpiece or hat, pick the right head and shirt piece, and then pick a color for your legs. It's a simple process that leaves plenty of room for that individual, creative touch — to say nothing of the accessories and costumes that players will discover along the way.

There are a lot of strong ideas resting on the back of this historic franchise, but there's still a long wait ahead for the final product. Perhaps staring at the concept artwork below will help tide you over.

Images courtesy Lego

Lego My MMO: A Universe of Virtual Bricks | Game | Life from Wired.com

Volunteers Locked Away in Mock Mars Mission

Six volunteers locked themselves away in a network of metal tubes for the next 105 days on Tuesday in an experiment to study the human stresses of a manned mission to Mars.

Four Russians and two Europeans — a mix of cosmonauts, doctors, an engineer and an airline pilot — shut the metal hatch behind them, sealing themselves inside a habitat at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow.

The three-month endurance test is a trial run for a planned 520-day mock Mars mission by the European and Russian space agencies later this year to study the effects of prolonged isolation on the human body and mind.

"A crew traveling to Mars will face major challenges, not least, how to cope with being confined to a small space and seeing the same faces for one and a half years," said Martin Zell, head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) space station utilization department. "It is of paramount importance to understand the psychological and physiological effects of long-duration confinement, to be able to prepare the crews in the best way possible and to learn about important aspects of the vehicle design."

German mechanical engineer Oliver Knickel and French pilot Cyrille Fournier represent Europe inside the mock Mars habitat. Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyez, Sergei Ryazansky, sports physiologist Alexei Shpakov and medical doctor Alexei Baranov, meanwhile, round out the crew's Russian contingent. The six men are the prime crew for the Mars500 project, the joint European-Russian effort by ESA, the IBMP with funding from Russia's Federal Space Agency.

"Mars500 is the proof that we are preparing for the future," said Simonetta di Pippo, ESA's director of human spaceflight. "[It] is an important part of this global endeavor as it provides us with the knowledge of how to keep a small crew psychologically and physiologically healthy, and ultimately, to succeed in the big challenge to bring humankind to Mars and safely back to Earth."

During the next 105 days, the six-man Mars500 crew is expected to simulate every aspect of a Martian expedition, including a long cruise to the red planet. After a mock orbital phase, the team would then simulate a landing on the Martian surface and an excursion before another long cruise period back to Earth.

Their habitat, which never leaves its Moscow facility, is a series of connected, but compact, metal tanks outfitted with supplies and equipment to last the full 105-day duration. It includes a Mars descent capsule, kitchen, medical area, research area and a crew compartment.

Altogether, the mock Mars ship contains about 2,152 square-feet (200 square-meters) of space. The Mars500 crew will have voice communications with a simulated Mission Control, as well as with their family and friends. But a 20-minute time lag will be built into the discussions to replicate the one-way transmission delay that would be experienced in a real Martian expedition.

A series of simulated emergencies are planned, and real-life emergencies would first fall to the crew to solve, ESA officials said.

"They will have to cope with simulated emergencies; they may even have real emergencies or illnesses," ESA officials said in a statement.

SPACE.com -- Volunteers Locked Away in Mock Mars Mission