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Comment Bionic DRM (Score 1) 256

by ZuchinniOne (#35102304) Attached to: PS3 Piracy Threats Cause Phone-Home DRM

We're so sorry that we created such an awful DRM system without telling you what we were doing ... to fix that problem and regain the trust of our customers we will now tell you exactly how badly our DRM system will screw over legitimate users. But at least we know that no one can find any way to crack the airtight PS3 security lockdown.

And next time we come out with a game we'll make sure to have a completely non-invasive DRM scheme that simply involves implanting a CAPCOM chip in your frontal lobe so that you can be our very own little Bionic DRM Commander.

Comment Re:Another problem with 3D (Score 1) 436

by ZuchinniOne (#35002874) Attached to: 3D Cinema Doesn't Work and Never Will

I think you misunderstand my point. When a 2D filmmaker focuses on one image element it is easy for the audience to follow and thus the filmmaker can tell their story.

However with a 3D environment one needs to search for the focus point that the filmmaker is presenting to you. All of the other points are out of focus, but the point they want you to focus on will be out of focus as well unless you find it.

So when that trick is used it makes the entire 3D experience difficult for many people and simply impossible for others.

An alternative to focus which might work better for a 3D environment would be a contrast change so that the element the filmmaker wants to highlight is much brighter/darker than the rest of the scene. The viewer's eyes will naturally move towards that element and focus appropriately.

Comment Another problem with 3D (Score 2) 436

by ZuchinniOne (#35001514) Attached to: 3D Cinema Doesn't Work and Never Will

Is that in the past movies have used tricks like focusing in a particular screen element in order to get you to pay attention to it. With 3D movies you should be allowed to focus on any element you want, yet film-makers (including for Avatar) have persisted in using 2D film tricks like this.

The only solution would be to film with a very wide field of view so that your focus point is essentially infinity.

This could also mediate the focus problem mentioned in the article ... but movie theaters would need to change the seating so that there were no seats anywhere near the screen.
Movies

3D Cinema Doesn't Work and Never Will 436

Posted by timothy from the tell-that-to-seth-rogan dept.
circletimessquare writes "Walter Murch, one of the most technically knowledgeable film editors and sound designers in the film industry today, argues, via Rogert Ebert's journal in the Chicago Sun-Times, that 3D cinema can't work, ever. Not just today's technology, but even theoretically. Nothing but true holographic images will do. The crux of his argument is simple: 600 million years of evolution has designed eyes that focus and converge in parallel, at the same distance. Look far away at a mountain, and your eyes focus and converge far away, at the same distance. Look closely at a book, and your eyes focus and converge close, at the same distance. But the problem is that 3D cinema technology asks our eyes to converge at one distance, and focus at another, in order for the illusion to work, and this becomes very taxing, if not downright debilitating, and even, for the eyes of the very young, potentially developmentally dangerous. Other problems (but these may be fixable) include the dimness of the image, and the fact that the image tends to 'gather in,' even on Imax screens, ruining the immersive experience."
Graphics

Nvidia Unveils New Mid-Range GeForce Graphics Card 158

Posted by timothy from the waiting-for-shills-to-plug-their-versions dept.
crookedvulture writes "Nvidia has uncorked another mid-range graphics card, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Every tech site on the web seems to have coverage of this new $250 offering, and The Tech Report's review will tell you all you need to know about the various flavors available, including how their performance compares to cards from 2-3 years ago. Interestingly, the review concludes that pretty much any modern mid-range graphics card offers smooth frame rates while playing the latest games at the common desktop resolution of 1920x1080. You may want to pay closer attention to power consumption and noise levels when selecting a new card."
Communications

Tens of Thousands Protest In Cairo, Twitter Blocked 167

Posted by timothy from the lol-cats-won't-save-you dept.
Haffner writes "Protests in Cairo, Egypt have now reached the tens of thousands. Police have deployed water cannons and tear gas. I am writing this live from Cairo, where I witnessed a throng of 1000-3000 march towards Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. I also witnessed 300-500 protesting on one of the bridges heading downtown. Most importantly, twitter has been blocked by many national carriers." Why Twitter? As reader pinkushun writes "Using Twitter and Facebook, the people instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities. The police could not keep up – and predictably, resorted to violence. Sadly this has led to three known deaths thus far." Update: 01/26 02:05 GMT by T : Jake Appelbaum is tweeting up a storm about the state of the active filters.
Advertising

Your Face Will Soon Be In Facebook Ads 344

Posted by CmdrTaco from the my-ad-where dept.
jfruhlinger writes "If you're planning on checking into Starbucks using Facebook Places, your friends may soon see your profile picture in a Facebook ad for Starbucks — and, it goes without saying, you won't be paid a dime. You can't opt out, unless, as Dan Tynan puts it, "studiously avoid clicking "Like" or checking into any place that has a six- or seven-figure ad budget." The ad will also include whatever text you use in your checkin, so Tynan suggests some judicious pranksterism ("Just checked into the Starbucks around the corner and this doppio mocha latte tastes like goat urine")."
The Internet

Two-Thirds of US Internet Users Lack Fast Broadband 402

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-comcastic dept.
jbrodkin writes "Two-thirds of US Internet connections are slower than 5 Mbps, putting the United States well behind speed leaders like South Korea, where penetration of so-called 'high broadband connectivity' is double the rate experienced in the United States. The United States places ninth in the world in access to high broadband connectivity, at 34% of users, including 27% of connections reaching 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps and 7% reaching above 10 Mbps, Akamai says in its latest State of the Internet Report. That's an improvement since a year ago, when the United States was in 12th place with only 24% of users accessing fast connections. But the United States is still dwarfed by South Korea, where 72% of Internet connections are greater than 5 Mbps, and Japan, which is at 60%. The numbers illustrate the gap between expectation and reality for US broadband users, which has fueled the creation of a government initiative to improve access. The US government broadband initiative says 100 million Americans lack any broadband access, and that faster Internet access is needed in the medical industry, schools, energy grid and public safety networks."
Television

Japanese Supreme Court Rules TV Forwarding Illegal 177

Posted by CmdrTaco from the legal-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder dept.
eldavojohn writes "If you use anything like a Slingbox in Japan, you may be dismayed to find out that a Japanese maker of a similar service has been successfully sued by Japan Broadcasting Corp. and five Tokyo-based local TV broadcasting firms under copyright violations for empowering users to do similar things. TV forwarding or place shifting is recording and/or moving your normal TV signal from its intended living room box to your home computer or anywhere on the internet. Turns out that Japan's Supreme Court overruled lower court decisions confirming fears that to even facilitate this functionality is a copyright infringement on the work that is being transferred."
Australia

Laser Incidents With Aircraft On the Rise 546

Posted by Soulskill from the plays-better-with-cats dept.
EqualSlash writes "High-power laser pointers available for cheap are increasingly finding abuse as the ultimate long-distance weapons of pranksters and vandals. The Federal Aviation Administration says laser events aimed on planes have nearly doubled in the last year, leaping from 1,527 in 2009 to 2,836 in 2010. The highest number of incidents was reported at Los Angeles International Airport, which recorded 102 in 2010. Lasers pointed at cockpits can temporarily blind pilots, forcing them to give up control of an aircraft to their co-pilot or abort a take-off/landing. In March of 2008, unidentified individuals wielding four green laser pointers launched a coordinated attack on six incoming planes at Sydney Airport, which resulted in a ban on all laser pointers in the state of New South Wales."
Censorship

Comics Code Dead 316

Posted by Soulskill from the may-make-a-shocking-return-in-later-issue dept.
tverbeek writes "After more than half a century of stifling the comic book industry, the Comics Code Authority is effectively dead. Created in response to Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, one of the early think-of-the-children censorship campaigns, and Congressional hearings, the Code laid out a checklist of requirements and restrictions for comics to be distributed to newsstand vendors, effectively ensuring that in North America, only simplistic stories for children would be told using the medium of sequential art. It gradually lost many of its teeth, and an increasing number of publishers gave up on newsstand distribution and ignored the Code, but at the turn of the century the US's largest comics publishers still participated. Marvel quit it in 2001, in favor of self-applied ratings styled after the MPAA's and ESRB's. Last year Bongo (publishers of the Simpsons comics) quietly dropped out. Now DC and Archie, the last publishers willingly subjecting their books to approval, have announced that they're discontinuing their use of the CCA, with DC following Marvel's example, and Archie (which recently introduced an openly gay supporting character, something flatly forbidden by the original Code) carrying on under their own standards. The Code's cousins — the MPAA and ESRB ratings, the RIAA parental advisory, and the mishmash of warnings on TV shows — still live on, but at least North American comic publishers are no longer subject to external censorship."
Music

RIAA Threatens ICANN Over Music-Themed gTLD Standards 174

Posted by Soulskill from the same-old-song-and-dance dept.
think_nix writes "A letter to ICANN (PDF) from Victoria Sheckler, Deputy General Counsel for the RIAA, demands modifications to the future implementation of the .music gTLD, threatening to 'escalate the issue' if certain concerns about 'wide scale copyright and trademark infringement' are not addressed by ICANN in compliance with the RIAA. 'Under the current proposed standard, we fear that we will have no realistic ability to object if a pirate chooses to hijack a music themed gTLD to enable wide scale copyright infringement of our works,' Sheckler said."
Piracy

Sony Planning Serial Keys For PS3 Games? 283

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-digging-that-hole dept.
Stoobalou writes "Rumor has it that Sony is looking to the PC games market to help solve its growing piracy problem on the PlayStation 3 — with the introduction of serial keys to its games. According to 'a very reliable source' quoted by PS3-Sense, Sony is attempting to address the recent revelation that it failed to properly secure the private signing key for its flagship console — leading to clever tinkerers producing third-party firmware that allows unofficial software and illegitimately downloaded games to run on unmodified hardware — by looking to the PC retail market for solutions. Unlike the PS3, the PC doesn't have a hardware DRM system built in to it — despite attempts by groups like the Trusted Computing Group, formerly the Trusted Computer Platform Alliance, to introduce such a thing — relying instead on software-based DRM and a surprisingly old-fashioned guarantee of a game's uniqueness: a serial key."

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