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Advertising

Adobe Calls Out Apple With Ads In NY Times, WSJ 731

Hugh Pickens writes "Businessweek reports that Adobe has taken out newspaper advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times today and posted an open letter to call out the tablet-computer maker for stifling competition. 'We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs,' the letter states. 'No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web.' The letter is part of a widening rift between Apple and Adobe. Two weeks ago, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs wrote a 29-paragraph public missive panning Adobe's Flash as having 'major technical drawbacks.' US antitrust enforcers also may investigate Apple following a complaint from Adobe, people familiar with the matter said this month. Adobe has also launched a banner ad campaign to let you know that they love Apple. The two-piece banner ads are composed of a 720x90-pixel 'We [heart] Apple' design, followed by a 300x250-pixel medium rectangle that reads: 'What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web.'"
Classic Games (Games)

Nostalgic Elation — the Super Mario Crossover 67

eldavojohn writes "Sure, they're stepping all over proprietary rights and copyright, but something must be said about the amount of bliss-filled nostalgia inside Exploding Rabbit's Super Mario Crossover. If the plumbers never really did it for you, you can now kill those goombas as Link, Mega Man, Samus, Simon Belmont, or Contra's Bill. Goodbye jumping and spitting; hello slicing, whipping, and shooting. Is this one of the early firsts in the new genre of video game mashups?"
Mars

How Do You Land a Nuke-Powered Mini-Cooper On Mars? 218

tcd004 writes "Miles O'Brien narrates this video simulation of NASA's next Mars shot, which promises to out-gun all previous efforts. The Mini Cooper-sized Mars Science Laboratory, which is now named Curiosity, will crawl the Martian surface under steam from a nuclear powerplant — but it's a gentle giant compared to its predecessors. Recent theories have emerged that previous attempts at identifying organic compounds in Martian soil may have actually cooked away any signs of life-giving elements. Curiosity will go to great pains to avoid scorching the Earth ... erm ... Mars."
Announcements

Rock Band 3 Officially Announced For Holiday 2010 76

An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009. MTV Games parent Viacom also saw Rock Band declines drag on its balance sheet in its last fiscal quarter, and expressed a need to refocus away from pricey peripherals in favor of software. It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings, and that it needs more support from the music industry in that department.'"
Internet Explorer

YouTube To Kill IE6 Support On March 13 282

Joel writes "Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website: 'Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers.'"
Microsoft

Where Microsoft's Profits Come From 295

derrida writes "Microsoft is the largest, most profitable software company in the world. In case you had any doubts about where Microsoft's profit comes from, there's nothing better than a graph to make all those numbers clear. As you may have guessed, the desktop division is quite profitable, while the online division is a money pit."
The Courts

NY Court Says Police Can't Track Suspect With GPS 414

SoundGuyNoise sends in a story that brings into relief just how unsettled is the question of whether police can use GPS to track suspects without a warrant. Just a couple of days ago a Wisconsin appeals court ruled that such tracking is OK; and today an appeals court in New York reached the opposite conclusion. "It was wrong for a police investigator to slap a GPS tracking device under a defendant's van to track his movements, the state's top court ruled today. A sharply divided NY Court of Appeals, in a 4-3 decision, reversed the burglary conviction of defendant Scott Weaver, 41, of Watervliet. Four years ago, State Police tracked Weaver over 65 days in connection with the burglary investigation."
Software

Submission + - DIY Live Video Broadcast Streaming?

RiscIt writes: I'm currently consulting with a (very) local television station who wishes to stream their broadcasts live on the web. They have a rather modest internet connection, which can support a single outgoing video stream without getting in the way of other bandwidth demands, but that's about it. The theory is that we should be able to stream to a web/video server which then replicates it to all current viewers. What software technologies are available today, preferably open source and free, which would help make this work? Solutions which can be viewed with the standard flash plugin are preferable. A "Slingbox to Flash" server would be ideal, for example.

Comment Re:You need to store something for monthly billing (Score 2, Insightful) 141

Reason to store Card Info: The customer WANTS them too. I'm sure by now you've come across an online store that ASKED if you wanted them to save it for next time. I use this with Dell and New Egg. If they don't ask then it's a problem, but for everyone else it's the CUSTOMER'S responsibility to make the decisions as to whether or not they trust the company.

Reason to be connected to the intarweb: They PROCESS the cards online (via authorize.net, for example).
I write e-commerce apps for a living. My usual policy (unless the clients demands something else) is to take the card numbers, save them encrypted in a database, wait until a store employee reviews their order to make sure it is okay to ship, charge the card (via authorize.net), ship it, close the order and delete the security code, expiration date, and all but the last 4 digits of the card number.

Thus if (god forbid) someone were to break in the only card numbers they would have access to are orders which have been placed but not shipped yet, and even those would be encrypted unless they also got the encryption key. It's quite likely that an order will be shipped within an hour of it being placed, so the risk involved is almost nothing.

There will always be risk involved, no matter how secure you build a system (or ignorantly THINK you have). Deciding whether or not to allow a company to save your card info is simply saying how much risk you are willing to take.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - waterproofed iPod

ottoveblin writes: "SwimMan inc. has created the world's first 100%waterproofed iPod. That means no box or case of any kind. Just you and your shuffle and the water. There's already 10 million Gen2 shuffles out there. The realization that they come in WATERPROOF of NOT is bound to shift the market. the release and info can be seen at: swimman.com/release.html thanks"

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