Counter-Strike: Source to get achievements, updates
Did you know that work is still being done on Counter-Strike: Source? Neither did we! Valve has put some new features into the game, and has posted on the official blog looking for beta testers to try the content before a wide release. What's new?
- 144 achievements added
- New lifetime player stats and summary screens
- New match player stats and summary screens
- New end-of-round display with MVP and interesting facts about a player
- Updated scoreboard with new icons, visual style, MVP stars, and avatar pictures
- New cinematic death camera
- New domination and revenge system
- Added avatar icons to voice chat, scoreboard, and end-of-round display
- Incorporated many Source engine updates
The slots for the beta test have been filled, but the features will only be tested "for a limited time" before everyone can jump in and play. Is this going to be enough to get players back into the game? It's very possible. I haven't played since the beta, so I'm more than a little out of touch with the community, but this sounds like a good excuse to jump back in and get absolutely toasted by the competition.
It's always a good thing to see older games continue to receive support.
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With >$1 million raised, Humble Bundle games go open source
It was a simple idea: take a collection of independent games, offer them with no DRM, and allow people to pay whatever they'd like. The result? 123,182 people have paid for the bundle so far, and the total raised is now an incredible $1,126,563.
That generosity will be rewarded. "As of 5/11/10, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra Overture pledge to go open source," the developers blogged. "We are preparing the sources right now and will be releasing them ASAP." The sale was a huge success, began many conversations, and it provided insight into the behavior of gamers. Here's a look at what comes next.
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Archaeopteryx biochemistry, courtesy of a synchrotron
Phosphorus, sulfur, and sprinkles of copper and zinc—that's what the archaeopteryx was made of, according to a new analysis of the avian dinosaur's remains. When researchers placed a very well-preserved fossil in a fluorescing x-ray synchrotron, they were able to study the chemical composition of the bones and even the feathers to get a glimpse of the organic material that was part of the archaeopteryx over a hundred million years ago.
When paleontologists find a fossil, figuring out the specimen's shape and size is sometimes the easy part—even parts that aren't bone, like feathers, leave impressions on the surrounding sediment. But when researchers looked closer at an archaeopteryx fossil from Bavaria, they found that a significant amount of organic matter remained in the limestone, including some from the feather shafts. They realized that analyzing the matter might allow them to draw some conclusions about the dinosaur's biochemistry.
To chemically image the fossil, researchers used a technique called synchrotron rapid scanning x-ray fluorescence to see concentrations of different elements in the fossil, as well as in its resident rock. The x-rays used in the technique are a side effect of operating an earlier generation of particle accelerators.
The bones were heavy in phosphorus and sulfur, with relatively high concentrations of trace metals like copper and zinc. The bones also had high levels of calcium, but the surrounding limestone was also primarily made of calcium, making it hard to say how much originated in the archaeopteryx itself. The soft-tissue matter in the feather wells was composed mostly of phosphorus. There were also unusually high amounts of iron patterning in the feather areas, but researchers thought this was more likely to be from the sediment than the archaeopteryx itself.
Since zinc levels in fossils are usually conserved over geological time, paleontologists note that the high levels of zinc in the archaeopteryx show it was well-preserved. Because of this, the representation of most of the elements is likely a fairly accurate one of the archaeopteryx's chemical makeup during its lifetime. To get a better read on calcium levels, researchers will probably need a sample from a sediment lower in calcium.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1001569107 (About DOIs).
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Is Europe's cure for wireless "bill shock" right for the US?
This year the European Union put the kibosh on tourists and travelers getting hit with €8,000 to €31,500 mobile Internet bills if they happen to download a TV show in the wrong neighborhood in France. EU-governed mobile companies must offer consumers a monthly cut-off limit for roaming broadband access. Once their bill goes past that sum, they'll be informed that their wireless connection to the Internet has been temporarily blocked, and asked how they want to proceed.
The Federal Communications Commission thinks the EU's cure for "bill shock" might not be a bad idea for the United States, too. "We seek to gather information on the feasibility of instituting usage alerts and cut-off mechanisms similar to those required under the EU regulations," an FCC Public Notice announced on Tuesday.
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Louisiana fiber network running—despite cable, telco lawsuits
According to one of its biggest boosters, community-owned fiber networks open a door that "has remained shut due to the sleight-of-hand antics of many private telecom companies who talk the game of broadband but only offer embarrassing low levels of capability."
But communities considering such a buildout need to know what they're in for: lawsuits.
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Air Force may suffer collateral damage from PS3 firmware update
When Sony issued a recent PlayStation 3 update removing the device's ability to install alternate operating systems like Linux, it did so to protect copyrighted content—but several research projects suffered collateral damage.
The Air Force is one example. The Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York picked up 336 PS3 systems in 2009 and built itself a 53 teraFLOP processing cluster. Once completed as a proof of concept, Air Force researchers then scaled up by a factor of six and went in search of 2,200 more consoles (later scaled back to 1,700). The $663,000 contract was awarded on January 6, 2010, to a small company called Fixstars that could provide 1,700 160GB PS3 systems to the government.
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Mozilla's Firefox 4 roadmap: faster, friendlier, more secure
Firefox Director Mike Beltzner has presented his plan for Firefox 4, the next major update of Mozilla's browser. Guiding the development of the new version are the questions "Who uses Firefox?" and "What do they want from it?"
Firefox has grown popular among end users and Web developers alike. For end-users, the work will focus on streamlining the UI: simplifying the browser's interface, making it easier to control the permissions that different sites have, and providing better facilities to personalize and customize the browser.
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Adobe's new Flash DRM comes with selective output control
Adobe has rejiggered its DRM software for the Flash platform, combining a number of access control features under the rubric of Flash Access 2.0. The new platform can give content providers all sorts of ways to offer media content securely, including controlling what type of output devices can display the content—in effect, Adobe it enabling HDCP and broadcast control flags for Flash content.
Adobe is touting the revised Flash Access platform as a way for content providers to reach the widest possible audience (assuming those content providers don't want to provide content for the 86 million iPhone OS devices out in the wild) and serving as an easy add-on to its Flash Media Server product. With a new SDK, it can also be integrated with secure downloads and what Adobe is calling HTTP Dynamic Streaming, which is essentially Apple's proposed HTTP Live Streaming standard with an XML-based manifest file (instead of a plain-text playlist file) and which so far only works with Flash Player or Adobe AIR.
If serving secure content to Flash clients only seems like a good business model, however, then you'll probably be glad to know that Adobe has also baked selectable output control right in to Flash Access 2.0. This allows content providers to "specify whether output protection technologies are required to output to external devices." A variety of digital and analog output protection technologies are currently supported, including HDCP, CGMS-A, and Rovi (aka Macrovision) ACP. While Adobe plans to bring support to all platforms, currently the output controls are only available on Windows. However, such controls could limit your ability to connect your connect your computer to a projector or other external display to view secure Flash content.
If there was anything that could possibly make Flash less desirable from a user's perspective, the addition of the worst of draconian DRM capabilities would have to be it. Output control is purely optional, but we suspect that some content providers won't be able to resist the temptation to use it now that it's available. Adobe and/or content providers will likely face some serious blowback if secure Flash content—which probably had to be paid for—suddenly won't play on the numerous non-HDCP displays currently in use.
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Apple offers possible solutions for iPad WiFi problems
According to a recently posted Apple support document, Apple plans to release a software update to address WiFi connectivity issues on the iPad that some users are experiencing. The document, which was first brought to our attention by the folks at Mac Rumors, is actually one of two troubleshooting articles on the subject, the latter of which offers much more basic solutions.
The problems users are having with WiFi involve weak signals, forgotten passwords, and issues with DHCP leases. If you are experiencing consistent problems, Apple offers a number of potential fixes that range from the obvious to the truly bizarre. Among the possible solutions listed are updating your router’s firmware, using WPA or WPA2 instead of WEP encryption, renewing the iPad’s IP address, toggling WiFi off and on, or increasing your screen brightness.
Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection, anything is worth a shot. If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.
Apple has yet to give an exact date as to when the update will be issued, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if I was looking to cure my WiFi connection issues.
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OEMs charged less for Office 2010 if they preload more
If an OEM wants to bundle Office Starter 2010 with a Windows computer they are selling, Microsoft plans to charge $5 per copy. If, however, the PC maker wants to save some dough, there's a way to pay just $2 per copy, but there's a catch. It also needs to bundle something called "PC Essentials," which includes Windows Live Essentials (Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Family Safety, and Sync) and the Bing Bar (which will be included in Essentials as of Wave 4). It will also need to set Bing as the default search engine and MSN as the homepage in the PC's browser.
This is according to a Microsoft reseller who shared details with ZDNet (see the slide above). It shows that Microsoft hopes its partners will use the OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK) to preload multiple copies of Office Starter 2010 and the Office 2010 image on new PCs. Then, they can use the OEM Partner Center (OPC) to purchase Office 2010 licenses and push them to their customers.
Office Starter 2010 is not available for purchase; it only comes preloaded on new PCs. It includes basic functionality so users can view, edit, and create documents via two ad-supported programs: Office Word Starter 2010 and Office Excel Starter 2010. In short, it's a replacement for Microsoft Works and trial versions of Office 2007 that expire in 60 days.
The second part of the strategy is the Product Key Card, available for purchase via major OEMs and electronic retail outlets. The Product Key Card is a single-license card that unlocks the functionality of OEM-preloaded copies of Office 2010, allowing users to upgrade to Office Home & Student 2010, Office Home & Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010.
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BSA: global software piracy down year-over-year
The Business Software Alliance, an industry trade group that represents many software vendors, has made stamping out software piracy a major initiative. To that end, it commissions an annual survey of global piracy, performed by IDC. There's not a whole lot of information about the methods employed in producing those numbers, so it's difficult to know how reliable they are in absolute terms. But said figures may be valuable for detecting trends, in which case the news is good for the BSA: although piracy remains substantial, it isn't growing at the rates it once was, and many industrialized countries have seen rates of piracy drop below 25 percent.
First, a bit about those methods. IDC makes its money in part by tracking trends in the computer industry, and performs annual surveys of the markets in those countries, targeting vendors, end users, and so on. In over 60 countries, it enlists local analysts to provide further details on the market; the handful of countries it has limited numbers for are dealt with by extrapolating conditions from similar countries (i.e., Kazakhstan's numbers might have been produced by looking at other former Soviet states with emerging markets). That's an approach that was recently slammed by the Government Accountability Office.
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Hands-on: sobees for iPad works, but no Facebook replacement
O Facebook app for iPad, where art thou? Facebook fans have been painfully aware that the social network has not yet released an iPad-native app, forcing users to choose between the iPhone app or using the Facebook website in Safari. Though there may be some behind-the-scenes drama that is preventing an official Facebook app from being released, third parties have begun coming to the rescue with their own offerings. One of the first is sobees for Facebook.
First things first: sobees does not look like the Facebook app we're all familiar with on the iPhone. Once you sign in through Facebook Connect and authorize the app to interact with your Facebook information, you're presented with a newspaper-like home screen. The application displays the most recent update as "breaking news" at the top of your screen, recent status updates in a scrollable list to the left, and flick-through-able recent images to the right. Scrollable lists of videos and recent links are found along the bottom of this home screen.
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What you can do when junk apps invade the App Store
Junk apps have been on the rise in the App Store, with some developers hoping to cash in on popular searches by offering "cheat" apps that ostensibly help you conquer the game you're really searching for. I noticed this myself recently when I went looking for Words With Friends. Developer Marco Arment dug a little bit deeper and believes these apps may be crossing into some legal gray areas. The good news, however, is that there's something that both developers and users can do about it.
Arment pointed out that many of these apps use icons, application names, and in some cases, other artwork that could constitute copyright or trademark violations. We found dozens of apps that use icons and logos for iPhone games like Words With Friends, Angry Birds, We Rule, and The Sims, as well as apps that purport to offer cheats for console games like Super Mario Bros Wii, Mario Kart, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Modern Warfare 2.
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Skate 3 is perfectly enjoyable, perfectly ordinary
Having never played Skate 2 for any real amount of time, Skate 3 seemed to come to me straight out of the ether. Consequently, this is going to be an impressions post much more than a full review. While Skate 3 is a perfectly enjoyable experience, after playing for a few hours I was looking for another disc to pop into my console. This is a good time in small doses, but it misses noteworthy status by a sizable margin.
Your character is out to start a crew and make some money; you're ranked by how many boards you sell. You need to do well at events around the hub, sell more boards, and attract more talent for your team in order to unlock more events. The problem with this progression is that nothing really seems to matter. You sell more boards and the number goes up. You can take a picture of your deeds, but the picture itself doesn't matter: do a lame trick, take an out-of-focus image, and no one says boo. This is a minor detail, but having a way to rank pictures for difficulty and creativity would have been welcome. The challenges can also be cheesed in many cases, but no self-respecting person would do that, would they?
Jason Lee provides voice-over, channeling the "Earl" character, and while it's fun at first, it gets cloying very quickly. The new zoomed-out camera provides a wider view of the action, something I wanted in the first Skate, but the original view is still preferable for lining up your grinds. Having the option is very welcome, however.
Being able to teleport from event to event is nice, but I still miss the days of the first Tony Hawk games before the hub worlds when I had to walk around while holding my board. I had a good time with Skate 3, but nothing about it jumped out as being a leap forward for the genre. Still, what else are you going to play if you're into skateboarding? This is a fun rental, especially if you have friends that will join you online. Just don't expect to be blown away by the experience.
There is nothing here that kills the game, but there is also nothing that makes this a must-play. That's an awkward place to be with a $60 price tag. Skate 3 is out now for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3; we played the Xbox 360 version.
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Twitter a decent stand-in for public opinion polls
The next time you're low on cash and need to get a quick read on the public's feeling on politics or current events, consider sampling Twitter. According to a new report out of Carnegie Mellon University's computer science department, sentiments expressed via the millions of daily tweets strongly correlate with well-established public opinion polls, such as the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) and Gallup polls. The data analysis methodology still needs some tweaking, but the researchers still believe that Twitter posts could act as a "cheap, rapid means of gauging public opinion."
Assistant professor Noah Smith and his team collected 1 billion Twitter messages posted in 2008 and 2009 and analyzed them for topic (politics versus economy) and sentiment (positive or negative). They compared the consumer confidence tweets against ICS data from the same period as well as Gallup's Economic Confidence Index. Tweets about President Obama were compared against Gallup's daily tracking polls from that time period, and tweets about the election were compared against 46 polls created by Pollster.
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