World of Warcraft is now free until level 20, core games drop in price
Remember when D.A.R.E. officers would warn you against the evil drug dealers who would give you the first hit for free in order to get you addicted? Well, think of Blizzard as a dealer who is extending that offer to the first 20 hits. Starting now, World of Warcraft has become free to play until you hit level 20.
"We've removed the previous 10- and 14-day trial time restrictions, and players who are interested in trying out World of Warcraft can now play the base game for free up to a maximum character level of 20, including draenei and blood elf characters—all they need is a Battle.net account and an Internet connection," Blizzard explained in a statement. If you ran through a previous 14-day trial, you can go back to your character and continue to play from the point you left the game if you'd like, but the level cap will be set at 20.
After that? Blizzard has some inexpensive ways of getting you into the game.
...players will be able to get both the original World of Warcraft and the game’s first expansion set, The Burning Crusade, for only $19.99 as part of the new digital Battle Chest now available in the online Blizzard Store. In addition, anyone who owns the original World of Warcraft, regardless of when they purchased the game, will automatically be able to access all of the content and features from The Burning Crusade expansion at no additional cost.
You're going to see this more frequently as companies find ways to sell you content through the games, using the title as a platform instead of a product. Valve recently moved Team Fortress 2 into the world of free-to-play, and even fighting games are becoming aggressive in post-launch monetization—although in that case there was no drop in the price for the game.
Sound off in the comments: are you now more likely to play World of Warcraft, or at least try it?
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Sending a beam of light along a sheet of graphene
To achieve the nirvana of computing power that never makes you wait, chip manufacturers are searching for ways to shovel electrons around at ever faster rates and over shorter distances. As in other cases, nirvana is best obtained by experimenting with new substances. For electrons, the mind-blowing substance of choice has recently been graphene. To make clock speeds go up, we'll need to understand how to jiggle electrons in graphene at optical frequencies. At the same time, we'll also need to learn how to control these electrons.
Luckily, electron juggling at optical frequencies has another name: surface plasmon polaritons, or, more casually, plasmons. Usually, we play with plasmons on a metal surface because these have lots of free electrons. But a pair of researchers from University of Pennsylvania wanted to see what sort of tricks can be played with plasmons on graphene. Their paper demonstrates some intriguing tricks, but I wish it had addressed the differences between graphene and metals more seriously.
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The Lego Barad-dûr: 50,000 pieces, 2 months to build, pure awesome
"I can't exactly tell you how many parts are in the model, but I ordered about 25,000, and the same amount of parts came from my own stock," Kevin Walter told Ars. "My final guess is more than 50,000." I first saw the images of his Lego model of Barad-dûr when another member of the staff posted images while we talked about stories we were working on. It's a huge construction, and without detailed source material to build from, the creator had to go by eye as well as trial and error.
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Hands on: Opera 11.50's new "featherweight" interface packs a punch
Opera has released version 11.50 of its desktop Web browser. The significant update introduces Opera's new "featherweight" user interface and brings a number of other new features and performance improvements.
The major browser vendors have all been working to simplify their user interfaces and reduce the amount of functionality that is exposed in their default layouts. Opera took a big step in that direction with the 10.50 release last year, when they hid the menu bar by default. The new "featherweight" interface takes the existing streamlined layout and overhauls it with a much more consistent style.
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Google, target of worldwide surveillance and takedown requests
Google continued to demonstrate its commitment to transparency on Monday by releasing fresh statistics on the number of times it has disclosed private user data to a government, or removed content at government request. The country-by-country report covers the second half of 2010.
During that period, the United States was the top requester of user information (4,601 requests), while Brazil was the leader in takedowns, with 263 requests leading to the removal of 12,363 items.
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Office 365 goes live, gives SMBs a taste of the enterprise
Microsoft today launched Office 365, its cloud-based productivity and collaboration suite, in 40 countries around the world. Office 365 combines access to Exchange e-mail, Lync messaging, SharePoint collaboration, the Office Web Apps, all into one monthly subscription.
Seven different price plans are available; one for small businesses and individuals, at $6 per user per month, four enterprise plans from $10 to $27 per user per month, and two for kiosk workers, priced at $4 and $10 per person per month. The small business and enterprise plans all offer 25 GB of e-mail, SharePoint access, and Lync messaging; the more expensive price tiers then add Office Web App access, the full desktop Office suite, and Lync voice capabilities. There's also an à la carte option allowing mix-and-match selection of features if the standard plans don't fit an organization's needs. The enterprise plans are more expensive than the comparably featured small business plan, but offer better support—the small business plan has no phone support—and better security—HTTPS access to SharePoint is only found on enterprise plans.
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Google: half a million Android devices activated daily
At the Google I/O event earlier this year, Google shared some statistics about the growth rate of the Android mobile platform. At the time, the search giant said that approximately 400,000 new Android devices are activated every single day. The number of daily activations has since grown to 500,000, according to Andy Rubin, Google's Android chief.
That's a considerable increase from the 300,000 daily activation statistic that Google cited towards the end of 2010. The statistic reflects rising adoption of Google's mobile platform. Rubin says that Android activations are seeing a worldwide growth rate of 4.4 percent per week.
The breadth of hardware vendors shipping Android across a wide range of devices on many networks is a key factor that has contributed to Android's popularity. The availability of the iPhone on Verizon's network has apparently made a small dent in Android's US marketshare, but the platform remains strong and has continued its ascent.
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Activision benefits from Supreme Court decision, didn't help pay for it
The Supreme Court ruled that video games are an act of expression, and games have been granted full protection under the First Amendment. This creates a strong precedent that should dissuade future politicians from trying push through legislation that will be considered not only unconstitutional, but costly to the their states.
"We are pleased with the ruling, which is an important affirmation of First Amendment rights and a victory against an unwarranted, selective attack on our industry," Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told Kotaku. "Protecting children from age inappropriate content is important and that's why we have an industry-standard ratings system that is clear and unambiguous."
Here's the problem: Activision is certainly going to benefit from the Supreme Court ruling, but it wasn't willing to pay for the industry's defense.
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Feature: Inside Google+: how the search giant plans to go social
Today, Google, the world’s largest search company, is formally making its pitch to become a major force in social networking. The product it’s announcing is called Google+, and observers might wonder whether it’s simply one more social effort by a company that has had a lousy track record in that field to date.
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Hacker group says Apple developer site susceptible to phishing hacks
A group that calls itself YGN Ethical Hacker Group has identified potential security holes in Apple's website for Mac and iOS developers. Those security holes could allow malicious hackers to use the Apple Developer Connection in phishing attacks to gain access to users' login and password information.
According to information supplied to Networkworld, the group identified three potential security issues on the site, including arbitrary URL redirects, cross-site scripting, and HTTP response splitting. In particular, the ability to arbitrarily redirect to other URLs could make phishing attacks against developers login credentials more likely to succeed.
"By modifying the URL value to a malicious site, an attacker may successfully launch a phishing scam and steal user credentials," the group said. "Because the server name in the modified link is identical to the original site, phishing attempts have a more trustworthy appearance." In other words, even though the redirect will cause users to end up at a malicious site, the original link would appear to come from
developer.apple.com.Since developers use their Apple ID to access password-protected areas of Apple's developer website, such as forums, beta OS releases, and SDKs, a successful phishing attack could give hackers access to a user's iTunes Connect account, iTunes Store purchases, and more. If the e-mail address is valid, hackers could also try using password cracks to get into a user's e-mail as well.
YGN said that it alerted Apple to the problem in late April, and that the company quickly acknowledged getting the report. "We take the report of a potential security issue very seriously," Apple told YGN. However, it doesn't appear Apple has closed the security holes.
To encourage Apple to act, the group says that it will release its discoveries to the security mailing list Full Disclosure "in a few days."
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Skype, ooVoo videoconferencing finally makes its way to Congress
Hold onto your hats: Congress has finally discovered Skype. The US House of Representatives Committee on Administration announced on Tuesday that its WiFi network officially supports the use of Skype and ooVoo, which is meant to enable Congress members and staffers to video conference with constituents while saving money on travel costs. The agreement has apparently been in the works for months, and has now come to fruition after smoothing out the House's security concerns.
“During a time when Congress must do more with less, we believe that these low-cost, real-time communication tools will be an effective way to inform and solicit feedback from constituents," Committee on House Administration Chairman Dan Lungren (R-CA) and House Technology Operations Team Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said in a statement. "We thank the CAO for ensuring that Members and staff can utilize these services while maintaining the necessary level of IT security within the House network, and look forward to identifying additional technological solutions to communication and transparency roadblocks.”
According to the Skype Blog, lawmakers will use Skype to hold meetings with those who can't travel to the Congressional office, participate in virtual town meetings, and "collaborate more effectively with other Members on important legislative efforts."
As far as security goes, Skype says that each Congressional office will be able to configure its own settings with a Skype Manager account, and reassures us that no one will be Skype-spying on the Congressional offices without their permission: "Skype software allows people to accept or block a contact, and it never 'answers' a call unless instructed to do so by the user. In other words, Skype video calls are initiated only when users at all ends of the call make the affirmative choice to enable video calling."
ooVoo went into slightly more detail about the process that led to the agreement. "ooVoo is making available to House Members our Professional version
which offers cloud-based SSL data encryption," ooVoo spokesperson Bryan Brown told Ars via e-mail. "Over a period of months,
the House Technology Operations team reviewed ooVoo's architecture and
security throughout the process. The team understood the cloud-driven
nature of ooVoo as a differentiator in terms of security and user
experience."
In a way, it's surprising that Congress members couldn't previously use videoconferencing services to communicate with constituents—after all, many already use e-mail to do so—but security was the main concern that held back the adoption of more feature-rich technologies. Chaffetz had previously told The Hill that the Technology Operations Team was worried about broadcasting classified items and wanted to ensure that the cameras couldn't be remotely activated. According to Lungren, however, those concerns have been resolved and all members and staff will need to accept "House-specific agreements" in order to "maximize protection" for all involved.
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Half of US twenty-somethings have no landline
The shift away from landlines continues, as 24.9 percent of all American adults now live in homes with wireless-only voice connections. Among younger adults aged 25 to 29, the numbers are twice as high; more than half have only a cell phone.
Don't feel too bad for the phone companies. The largest wireline companies, such as AT&T and Verizon, are linked with wireless units that have cashed in on the switch to cell phones and now rake in huge profits.
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Capcom crushes replay value of new game by making saved games permanent
When you open your brand-new copy of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D today, you may find something interesting in the manual. "Note: Saved data on this software cannot be reset," you are warned. When you play the game and your progress is saved, there is no way to take it back. That is your game forever.
Let me explain why this is so infuriating if you're unclear on just how hostile this is to gamers. Once you've beaten the game, you can't erase your progress and start over. If you want to loan the game to a friend, they won't be able to start their own game from the beginning. You may be able to trade the game into a store or sell it, but I wouldn't suggest buying it from someone used, since you won't be able to start from the beginning and unlock all the content yourself.
"Secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision, so we hope that all our consumers will be able to enjoy the entirety of the survival-action experiences that the game does offer," Capcom said in a statement given to Giant Bomb.
"In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, all mission progress is saved directly to the Nintendo 3DS cartridge, where it cannot be reset," the statement continued. "The nature of the game invites high levels of replayability in order to improve mission scores. In addition, this feature does not remove any content available for users."
If this isn't to hurt the resell value, why else would you do this? Also, this hurts everyone who buys a copy of the game, and significantly harms the long-term replayability of the title. I often wipe the saved game files of my portable games to start fresh, and this new "feature" makes that impossible.
So thanks, Capcom. You have made my purchasing decision much easier.
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Chromosome ends tied to life history, chronic diseases
University of California-San Francisco's Liz Blackburn got her Nobel Prize for studies that identified the specialized bit of machinery, called telomerase, that maintains the ends of chromosomes, which would otherwise be expected to shrink every time the cell divides. That shrinkage is thought to set a limit on the number of cell divisions that can occur in normal cells, and the Prize recognized that its reactivation appears to be a necessary step in the transformation to cancerous growth. But Blackburn used her talk at the Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting to argue that all sorts of diseases were associated with changes in telomerase activity, and that the chromosome ends provide a readout of a person's life history. And she's got a robot that's busy generating data to back her up.
Bacteria and Archaea have circular chromosomes, which ensures that the DNA has no loose ends in these cells. The complex cells of eukaryotes have linear chromosomes in their nucleus. This creates two problems. The DNA repair abilities of the cells should view the ends, or telomeres, of the chromosomes as a site where a chromosome has broken, and attempt to repair it. In addition, the enzymes that copy DNA are unable to start copying at the end of a piece of DNA. Thus, whenever a cell has to copy the DNA, the copying process will necessarily ignore some of the ends of the chromosome.
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Mortal Kombat reveals for-pay future of fighting game DLC
Mortal Kombat is one of the best fighting games to be released this generation. A deep roster of player favorites on the character select screen, content that's fun to play with friends or even alone—which is rare in fighting games—and on the PlayStation 3 there's even a novel 3D feature for gamers with the necessary hardware. We gave the game a "buy" rating and stand by it; this is a title that will impress fans of the franchise as well as newcomers.
From a business perspective, however, Mortal Kombat is one of the first fighting games to fully embrace the digital culture we live in, with content promised prerelease, a for-pay online strategy if you buy used, and postrelease DLC coming at a regular pace. Heck, if you don't want to pay for characters one at a time, you can even preorder the DLC to save some money. This is a game that's trying to keep us engaged (and paying) for as long as possible.
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