Exclusive: Rock Band 3 brings keytar, new "pro" mode
Information about a keyboard being included in the Rock Band 3 package was teased in the Green Day: Rock Band demo, and we have now been given some exclusive information by our now-famous Mole about what we can expect from Rock Band 3. Read on to find out what to expect from the instruments in the latest version of the game.
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VMware gives Fusion a major speed boost with 3.1 update
VMware may have closed the performance gap between Fusion and Parallels Desktop with its latest Fusion 3.1 update. The free update is available now to all Fusion 3.x users, and promises big improvements, especially in 2D and 3D graphics. According to VMware's director of personal desktop products, Pat Lee, this update is all about speed, speed, and more speed.
Overall virtual machine performance in Fusion 3.1 is up 35 percent, according to WorldBench 6 results. 2D graphics performance is almost four times faster than 3.0, and operations like application launching as well as VM suspend and resume are also faster. If you have higher-end hardware, Fusion VMs can now take advantage of up to 8 processor cores for added performance, and virtual disks can also be sized up to 2TB if needed.
3D graphics performance in particular—an area we noted had some problems in our review of Fusion 3.0—has been improved five-fold. OpenGL support covers up to version 2.1, and is now hardware accelerated across the board for Windows Vista and Windows 7. These 3D graphics improvements give an overall boost to Windows Aero interface responsiveness, but also make Fusion a more viable platform for games. Lee told Ars that games like Portal and Civilization 4 run up to three times faster with this update.
Other improvements are included in the update as well. Unity support is improved for a more seamless experience when running Windows apps, and now takes advantage of Snow Leopard's Dock Exposé feature. USB EasyConnect lets you choose to assign a USB device to your Mac or a VM when it's connected, and can even remember that choice the next time that device is connected. Guest OS support for recent Linux distros, including RHEL 5.4, SUSE Linux 11 SP1, Ubuntu 8.0.4.4, and Ubuntu 10.04, is also included. A full list of improvements is posted on VMware's website.
Lee told Ars that the company is "really excited" about Fusion 3.1, and given all the performance improvement, we're guessing that if you use Fusion much, you will be too.
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Rock Band 3 to add keyboards to already crowded package
The demo for the upcoming Green Day: Rock Band shows what's wrong with the series. There's nothing wrong with the gameplay—hitting buttons on your plastic guitar as notes stream down the screen is still fun—but you have to wonder how many people have been hoping for an entire $60 release centered on Green Day songs, as opposed to downloading one or two tracks As you exit the demo, however, you're shown a graphic for the upcoming Rock Band 3, and it features what appears to be a keyboard icon.
Creating a keyboard peripheral wouldn't be difficult, as one could say that the instrument is nothing more than a series of buttons to begin with. Inexpensive and portable keyboards can also be found at any music supply store. The question is whether rhythm gamers need yet another plastic peripheral for their games. On a recent earnings call, Activision said that it was moving away from iterating the hardware in Guitar Hero to focus on the software, and that seems like a smart move.
Adding yet another instrument when you need two guitars, three microphones, and a drum to have a full set seems like a hard sell. How many people have the space for that many fake instruments? Do you have that many friends to play Rock Band with?
The rhythm game genre is in a state of decline, and all of the big players are going to float different strategies to keep their franchises alive. We still know next to nothing about Rock Band 3, but an extra instrument is an obvious, and possibly misguided, direction.
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New political taunt: We have more Facebook friends than you
In a sign of just how mainstream social networking has become, Republicans have now taken to bragging that they "out-tweet" the Democrats—and have more Facebook friends, too.
Yesterday, Congressional Republicans launched America Speaking Out, a new website that lets citizens propose and vote on policy ideas. (Most recent comment in the "American Values" category: "i spent 20 years in our military i stood in the arlington cemetary looking at all the lives that were gave for freedom and all i could do was apoligize to the dead soldiers because our president is trying to take back what they stand for FREEDOM. [sic throughout]" )
At the launch, Republicans talked up their social media chops. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said that more House Republicans use Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook than the Democrats do, and she added, "House Republicans have tweeted five times as many [times] as the House Democrats. Leader Boehner has almost five times as many Facebook fans as Speaker Pelosi." (Boehner has 74,969 Facebook fans, while Pelosi has 20,341. And Pelosi doesn't even tweet!)
Twitter, nearly unknown in national political circles until recently, can now be freely discussed even by non-nerds, and Facebook friends are used as proxies for popularity. Social networking's pace of change and speed of adoption have been whiplash-inducing; how much longer can it be before we drop expensive elections altogether and just start voting on Facebook?
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Young'uns more guarded about online privacy than older folks
The stereotype that it's the young people who are the ones going wild and posting questionable content online may not be entirely accurate. According to a new report out of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, those between the ages of 18 and 29 are the most active when it comes to managing their reputation online, and they're the most likely to make use of privacy settings on social networks.
Pew surveyed 2,253 users over the age of 18 and found that 71 percent of young adults (18-29) changed their privacy settings on social networks—a significant percentage more than any other age group, including the just-as-savvy 30-49 group. The young adults were also the most likely to untag themselves in photos uploaded by others and to delete unwanted comments on their profiles. Surprised yet? They were also the most likely to take active steps to limit the amount of personal information about them online—in fact, this group was the only group to keep doing so at the same levels since 2006. Every other age group saw relatively large drops in their efforts to limit their personal information over the same time period.
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Amazon elbows its way back into number two music sales slot
Perhaps Apple should be worried: Amazon is once again climbing the music charts, becoming the second largest music retailer in the US, according to the latest data from the NPD Group. Amazon is now tied with Walmart for second place, and the two retailers sit well behind chart-topping iTunes. Though it will still be a while before Amazon catches up with Apple, Amazon's growth shows that it is a threat to Apple's dominance.
According to NPD, the iTunes Store sold 28 percent of all music bought by consumers in the first quarter of 2010, up four percentage points from the year before. Amazon made similar gains (three percentage points) to 12 percent of all music sold. A large part of the reason for Amazon's success is the launch of its (now) almost three-year-old MP3 store—when it was only selling CDs in 2007, Amazon lost ground to iTunes in NPD's ranks, selling only 6.7 percent of music bought by consumers.
NPD VP Russ Crupnick agreed that Amazon's strength lies in its ability to use digital to prop up CD sales. "This dual-pronged approach of selling both digital music and CDs helps attract the most valuable and committed music buyer who prefers access to both formats," Crupnick said in a statement.
When isolated for just online downloads, Apple still has 70 percent of the market (up 69 percent from a year ago) while Amazon sits at 12 percent (up from 8 percent). Clearly, there is a lot of online ground to be made up before Amazon truly threatens Apple, but Amazon's music downloads are growing at a faster rate. This is undoubtedly part of the reason Apple allegedly began to threaten music industry players who participated in Amazon's promotions, landing it some antitrust probe action from the US Department of Justice.
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Seriously, we're exactly like Google! isoHunt makes its case
Last week, the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus held a press conference with RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol. They rolled out a new list of six horrific websites that make copyright infringement simple—and that just might destroy your job and family.
"An Internet of chaos may meet a utopian vision but surely undermines the societal values of safe and secure families and job and revenue-creating commerce," said Bainwol. "Shining the spotlight on these websites sends a vital message to users, advertisers, payment processors and governments around the world."
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73 Democrats tell FCC: drop net neutrality rules
A slew of House Democrats have sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission warning the agency not to go forward with its plan to partially reclassify ISPs as common carriers, a move needed to impose net neutrality rules.
"The uncertainty this proposal creates will jeopardize jobs and deter needed investment for years to come," wrote Texas Congressman Gene Green on Monday. "The significant regulatory impact of reclassifying broadband service is not something that should be taken lightly and should not be done without additional direction from Congress."
Plus, the "controversy surrounding that approach" could "serve as a distraction from what should be our Nation's foremost communications priority: bringing broadband to every corner of America, getting every American online," the letter continues. It's co-signed by 73 Democrats.
The FCC has been looking for a revised means to set up Internet non-discrimination rules ever since a Federal court shot down its Order against Comcast for P2P throttling. But at the same time that Green and his backers sent the FCC their letter, Capitol Hill's top Democrats, far more sympathetic to the FCC's plans, announced that they want to get that "additional direction from Congress" thing going via hearings to revise the Communications Act.
"In the long term, if there is a need to rewrite the law to provide consumers, the Commission, and industry with a new framework for telecommunications policy, we are committed as Committee Chairmen to doing so," wrote Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) earlier this month.
The Green letter seemed heaven-sent by the anti-net neutrality group Americans for Prosperity, host of the website NoInternetTakeover.com. And it was roundly condemned by the pro-net neutrality group Free Press, which unsparingly dissects the document on its SavetheInternet site.
The statement "is so full of misinformation that no member of Congress should in good conscience put his or her name on it," Save the Internet insists. Nevertheless, many did—and they are members of FCC Chair Julius Genachowski's own party.
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Fedora 13 released with open 3D drivers and Python 3 stack
The developers behind the popular Fedora Linux distribution announced on Tuesday the official release of version 13, codenamed Goddard. It brings some important platform improvements and several new desktop applications.
In order to get hardware-accelerated 3D graphics on the Linux desktop, users have typically had to rely on the proprietary drivers that are supplied by the graphic card vendors. The Linux community has had tremendous difficulty building its own alternative open source drivers, but the hard work is starting to pay off.
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Apple facing antitrust probe over online music dealings
The US Department of Justice has reportedly launched an antitrust inquiry into Apple and its music sales tactics, according to unnamed insiders speaking to the New York Times. Investigators have reportedly begun questioning members of the music industry about Apple in an attempt to determine whether the company is abusing its dominant market position. The probe is said to be in its early stages.
According to the Times, the DoJ has specifically inquired about reports from March that Apple put pressure on music labels not to participate in Amazon MP3's "Daily Deal" promotion. At that time, anonymous music industry executives told Billboard that Apple was uncomfortable with the labels promoting music on both iTunes and Amazon. iTunes reps allegedly began threatening to "[withdraw] marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals" if labels continued participating in Amazon's promotion.
Apple has been the top music retailer in the US since early 2008, which is why the DoJ has taken a special interest in the company's tactics. Apple has never been one to rest on its laurels, either—its alleged behavior toward Amazon, a relatively small competitor by comparison, is an indication that it views the online retail giant as a growing threat. The investigation may turn up nothing, but if the DoJ finds that Apple's behavior was indeed inappropriate, Apple could find itself in a world of hurt.
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Researchers discover the plasmaron, a new quasiparticle
A new quasiparticle has been discovered, according to a report published in Science on Thursday. The new phenomenon, called a "plasmaron," was found in a sample of doped graphene, where it appeared courtesy of the material's unusual arrangement of electrons in its electron cloud. Because the behavior of the quasiparticle is different from that of its individual components, researchers should be able to use this new knowledge to make better predictions of the atomic and molecular states present in graphene, and keep watch for the appearance of plasmarons in similar materials.
A quasiparticle is not a sort-of particle, as the name implies, but usually represents a combination of a bulk effect and a material. For example, an electron is only a particle, but an electron that blocks the attraction between another electron and a proton could act as a quasiparticle. A quasiparticle can also be purely effect, like plasmons, which are quantum packets of excitation in the electrons in a metal. To find quasiparticles, researchers often have to be able to isolate a single particle behaving a particular way—not always an easy task.
When these particular researchers looked at graphene doped with potassium and its band structure (the energies that electrons can occupy), they found one spot where holes left by electrons exhibited unusual behavior—their movement couldn't be described by the normal set of rules.
They realized that the intersection of charge bands caused the holes to have greater binding energy than usual, and that these are actually able to exert plasmon effects on their environment. The combination meant they had a new quasiparticle on their hands: the plasmaron.
The appearance of the quasiparticle seems like a highly specialized case, since it was found in a specific material prepared a special way. Still, knowing its behavior and weird manipulation of energy will allow researchers to account for it more fully when modeling uses of graphene, as well as look for it to crop up in similar electron-hole situations.
Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1186489 (About DOIs).
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Game reviews on Metacritic: why we avoid inclusion
The world of game reviews is often difficult to navigate. Everyone uses different scores, and a large emphasis is placed on the single score given to games by Metacritic, a review-aggregation site. Metacritic uses a scale of 1 to 100 for reviews, a figure calculated by averaging multiple scores. What comes out after that averaging is seen as something akin to a gold standard for judging the quality of a game. We've been asked numerous times why we're not included in the game rankings given by Metacritic: our reviews aren't linked from the site, and we're not included in the final uber-score. That's by design.
I had the good fortune of being a guest on the GameShark podcast called "Jumping the Shark," and the conversation centered on the games we were playing and the issue of game reviews. One of the details shared on the podcast was rather surprising, especially since it seems to be a common practice.
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Red Dead Redemption review: it's your huckleberry
The Grand Theft Auto series has maintained its quality up through the fourth release, including the chapters used to flesh out the world of Liberty City. Red Dead Redemption takes the wide-open, living-world formula, shoots it back in time to the early 20th century, and places it in the world of the Western. You play as John Marston, a man who used to run with a band of outlaws until the US government sent him out west to bring some men to justice. Some men who used to be his friends. Why is he doing this? Simple. The government has his family.
If you've ever watched Deadwood you know this setting. The West isn't quite as wild as it once was: the rule of law is beginning to crush the spirit of the land, bringing everyone under the thumb of society. The Native Americans may not have their land, we're told in the game's introduction, but in exchange they have been given the gift of Christianity. Our hero doesn't seem to think this is a fair trade.
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Rumor: Front camera makes appearance in new iPhone ads
As has become a yearly tradition, Apple is gearing up to release a new hardware revision of the iPhone. Several leaks have revealed prototypes, Apple has already showcased some features of iPhone OS 4.0, and we're hearing that retailers are starting to clear out stock of older models. To promote the launch of the iPhone—which Jobs has promised will be "A+" and "won't disappoint"—Apple appears to be tapping acclaimed director Sam Mendes to direct ads for the device, which will feature the long-rumored video chat capabilities.
Engadget received a tip that Mendes was charged with directing the new ads, and a tweet from an audition actress corroborates the story. Another source told Engadget that at least one of the ads will feature a mother and daughter using the rumored front-facing camera for a video chat, confirming that the long-requested (and oft-hinted) feature will finally come to the iPhone.
Mendes is probably most well-known for his first feature film, American Beauty, which earned five Oscars including Best Director. Mendes also directed the atmospheric films Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, and Away We Go. Before directing film, Mendes also directed theater, and helmed the Tony award-winning revival of Cabaret.
Apple must be quite confident in the next iPhone to hire Mendes, who probably doesn't work cheap. However, Apple has a long history of working with famous directors for its ad campaigns, including hiring Ridley Scott to create the original Macintosh ad from 1984 and Errol Morris for the "Switch" ads from the early 2000s.
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Chrome 5 released, browser exits beta for Mac and Linux
Google announced today the official release of Chrome 5 for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It arrives less than a month after Google made the new version available through its beta channel. This release reflects Chrome's rapid pace of evolution and Google's strong commitment to advancing Web technology and performance.
Chrome 5 brings significant performance improvements, including a major increase in JavaScript execution speed. It also brings support for important HTML5 features, including Web Sockets and drag-and-drop. The JavaScript acceleration and robust compatibility with emerging standards are important capabilities that will enable developers to write richer and more sophisticated Web applications.
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Hands on: Adobe PDF reader for Android slow, gets job done
Following the Google I/O developer conference, Adobe has released an official PDF reader for Google's Android mobile operating system. The application, which allows users to view and navigate PDF files on Android handsets, has a simple and effective feature set.
We tested the program on an HTC Evo 4G smartphone running Android 2.1. To evaluate its performance with relatively complex layouts, we used the latest issue of Full Circle Magazine as a sample PDF. The initial load time was a bit heavy—when we opened the PDF file from the browser's download manager, it took roughly six seconds for the application to fully launch and render the first page.
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Cellular networks a key to getting developing world online
When I was still a student (go Boilers!), I had a friend whose family lived on a farm in semi-rural Indiana. They had just gotten their first taste of the Internet in 2003 in the form of (expensive) satellite Internet, but said that Cingular had covered parts of their area with cell service for some time. This scenario seemed backwards to some of us who had been online long before cell phones became mainstream. In reality though, the situation is still quite common in rural and developing areas of the globe, and the near ubiquity of cell service may be the key to getting the majority of the world's population online.
According to the International Telecommunications Union's massive 2010 World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report (PDF), nearly 90 percent of the world's population has cell coverage. In fact, the ITU estimates that 95 percent of rural areas in developed countries have a cell signal, while 75 percent of rural areas in developing countries have the same. Africa is suffering the most with just 50 percent of the rural population being covered by cell service, though this number has grown significantly since 2003 (20 percent).
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Bach, Allard out as Redmond revamps Entertainment & Devices
Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, home of the Xbox 360, Zune, and Microsoft's phone products, is undergoing a radical restructuring. Two big names—E&D president Robbie Bach, and "Chief Experience Office and Chief Technology Officer" J Allard—are leaving. Robbie Bach will not be replaced. Instead, Don Mattrick, who leads Microsoft's interactive entertainment business, and Andy Lees, who leads the mobile communications business, will report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer.
The departures and reorganization confirm rumors published yesterday by the Wall Street Journal. J Allard was last week reported to be "on sabbatical" and unlikely to return, with suggestions that the cancellation of the Courier project had precipitated his departure.
Allard has denied that this was what motivated his decision to leave, saying that after 19 years at the company, he wants to spend more time on his "personal interests," particularly "adventure sports." It looks like he won't be leaving Microsoft entirely behind; in an e-mail to Microsoft employees announcing the reorganization, Steve Ballmer said that J Allard would continue to work with him in the future as an adviser, "helping incubation efforts, looking at design and UI, and providing a cross-company perspective on these and similar topics."
Robbie Bach is retiring after 22 years at the company. Ballmer wrote that the decisions were independent of each other; it's just coincidence that they're happening at about the same time. Neither man is leaving the company immediately; to ensure a smooth transition, both will remain at Microsoft for the next few months.
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Digging into AT&T's new $325 early termination fee
Bad news is traditionally reserved for Friday—late Friday afternoon being most promising. And last Friday, AT&T dropped a bit of bad news in an "open letter to our valued customers": get ready to pay $325 in early termination fees (ETFs) if you want a new iPhone.
According to the letter, AT&T will bifurcate the ETFs it charges on subsidized handsets. Consumers who opt for "basic and quick messaging phones" face a $150 charge for canceling their contracts early, reduced by $4 each month of the contract. Consumers who want netbooks, smartphones, and other "advanced, higher end devices" will now face a $325 ETF, reduced by $10 each month.
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