Ian Lamont writes "In the runup to Apple's WWDC 2008, Chris Tompkins thinks that the iPhone's gaming potential 'might finally put the lackluster Java-based cell phone gaming market to death.' He cites the iPhone's use of Core Animation adapted for ARM processors, which he says allows for the advanced effects of OS X and now OpenGL-accelerated 3D games, as well as the importance of an on-demand store and Internet connection. Tompkins says that while certain genres lend themselves to the iPhone's touch controls, such as real-time strategy games (think StarCraft) the lack of physical controls will force developers to creatively approach the multitouch and accelerometer on the iPhone. His advice to Apple — make a compelling overture to independent game designers, and treat them like rock stars. Tompkins, incidentally, is one of several people who have recently pointed to Apple's mobile gaming potential."

explosivejared writes "It sounds farcical when you first hear it, but NBC has teamed up with an ad agency to produce actual feature programs that are centered around promoting the products of the network's sponsors. The network has already begun production on one sci-fi program entitled 'Gemini Division,' which will act as a platform for products from Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco. The programming will be broadcast via the network's 'digital properties,' e.g. the NBC web site. I guess it was only a matter of time for something like this to come along after product placement became the norm."

BUL2294 notes a CNN article reporting that the Mars Rovers program at NASA is facing budget cuts of $4 million for this year and $8 million for fiscal 2009. This will mean job cuts; and in all likelihood Spirit will be put in "hibernation mode," to be reactivated when or if future funding becomes available."

Update: 03/29 20:02 GMT by KD : NASA has rescinded the memo to the JPL threatening budget cuts, and is now saying that no rovers will be shut down.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "In the past few years, scientists have looked to viruses as potential allies in fighting cancer. Now researchers at Yale University have found a virus in the same family as rabies that effectively kills an aggressive form of human brain cancer in mice. Using time-lapse laser imaging, the team watched vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) rapidly home in on brain tumors, selectively killing cancerous cells in its path, while leaving healthy tissue intact. 'A metastasizing tumor is fairly mobile, and a surgeon's knife can't get out all of the cells,' says Anthony Van den Pol, lead researcher and professor of neurosurgery and neurobiology at Yale. 'A virus might be able to do that, because as a virus kills a tumor cell, it could also replicate, and you could end up with a therapy that's self-amplifying.' It's not yet clear why VSV is such an effective tumor killer, although Van den Pol has several theories. One possible explanation may involve a tumor's weak vascular system. Vessels that supply blood to tumors tend to be leaky, allowing a virus traveling through the bloodstream to cross an otherwise impermeable barrier into the brain, directly into a tumor."

IGN has some interesting coverage of a panel at GDC 2008 that featured some of the top names in the MMO world who got together to discuss the future of the genre. "On hand were Jack Emmert of Cryptic Studios, Mark Miller of NCSoft, Min Kim of Nexon and Rob Pardo of Blizzard Entertainment. MMO newbie Ray Muzyka was also on hand to share his thoughts as BioWare moves into the MMO arena. [...] The conversation got a lot more heated when the subject of micro-transactions was introduced. This is a popular revenue model in Asia, where the games themselves are free to play but charge a premium for a variety of premium extras, from vanity items to additional content or abilities. It's a model that's working well for Korean developer Nexon but hasn't been adopted by many American developers."

WirePosted points us to a story discussing the future of news reporting. For over a year, CNN has been accepting user-generated news stories and posting the best of them for all to see. Earlier this week, CNN handed over the reins of iReport.com, allowing unfiltered and unedited content from anyone who cares to participate, provided it adheres to "established community guidelines". Analysts point to the amateur footage from the Virginia Tech shootings and the Minnesota bridge collapse as an example of the capabilities of distributed reporting. Will this form of user-driven reporting (with which we are well acquainted) come to challenge or supplant traditional new broadcasting?

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a new report from EDUCASE (pdf), it would cost $100 billion to wire the US with fiber optics and keep our infrastructure from falling behind the rest of the world. Specifically, they recommend what has worked in many other countries — government investment and unbundling — which are often criticized by free market groups, even though those policies have resulted in faster, better connections for smaller total costs. Ars Technica mentions in their analysis of this report that the President will be releasing a report on US broadband today, too."

wikinerd writes "Following an online petition in November 2007 by members of an OS/2 online community to open-source OS/2, IBM answered by sending a letter via FedEx making it clear that OS/2 is going to remain closed-source, citing business, technical, and legal reasons. An earlier petition in 2005 that had attracted over 11,000 signatures met a similar response. Both petition letters to IBM Corp. can be viewed at the OS2World.com library. The End of Support period for OS/2 passed by in December 2006, and the given IBM's response the future for OS/2 doesn't look bright, unless re-implementation projects such as Voyager or osFree attract the necessary critical mass of operating system developers."

In an event not as surprising as this morning's buyout announcement, but still noteworthy, Oracle has purchased BEA Systems. The middleware maker was snapped up for the sum of $8.5 billion, the second offer Oracle put forward. "BEA had long been considered a prime takeover target in an industry that has been consolidating for several years, but BEA executives had repeatedly dismissed Oracle's overtures, saying the company could perform better independently. Mr. Icahn began buying up BEA shares last summer, and today owns 13 percent of the company. The deal makes Oracle the undisputed leader in the market for middleware, business software that gets its name from its role as a layer of programming code that resides between a company's database system and the payroll, human resources and inventory systems that use the same data."

palegray.net noted a wired story about an industry trend towards watermarking and away from DRM. It says "With all of the Big Four record labels now jettisoning digital rights management, music fans have every reason to rejoice. But consumer advocates are singing a note of caution, as the music industry experiments with digital-watermarking technology as a DRM substitute. Watermarking offers copyright protection by letting a company track music that finds its way to illegal peer-to-peer networks. At its most precise, a watermark could encode a unique serial number that a music company could match to the original purchaser. So far, though, labels say they won't do that: Warner and EMI have not embraced watermarking at all, while Sony's and Universal's DRM-free lineups contain "anonymous" watermarks that won't trace to an individual." Here is a Technical discussion on AudioBox and PSU.edu's Abstract Index

holy_calamity writes "A New Zealand physicist has written a paper saying that physicists should seriously explore the possibility the universe is a giant virtual reality simulation. He says that the existence of quantum phenomena could be due to the underlying digital nature of the simulation and also claims his VR hypothesis can explain relativity, the big bang and more. It should be possible to perform experiments to prove the hypothesis too. He reasons that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "One century ago, many Americans still had not seen a movie or ridden in an automobile. The New York World greeted its readers on January 1, 1908 with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America: 'We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves,' the newspaper said. 'We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air. The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need.' Today the NY Times asked ten knowledgeable New Yorkers to imagine New York City a century from today. Their visions include archaeological excavations at the Fresh Kills landfill, the waterfront at Third Avenue and Seventh Avenue, a dome over Central Park, and a virtual reality grid superimposed over the city."

An anonymous reader writes "Linux-gamers.net has posted a thorough, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. It compares seven open source shooter games in a lengthy discussion. Few have gone to the trouble of comparing and carefully examining the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction."

nem75 writes "The New York Times has a review of British AI researcher David Levy's book 'Love and Sex with Robots'. He claims that within a span of about 50 years the day will come when people could actually fall in love with life-like robots. While this may seem far fetched at first, he has some pretty interesting views. 'He begins with what scientists know about why humans fall in love with other humans. There are 10 factors, he writes, including mystery, reciprocal liking, and readiness to enter a relationship. Why can't these factors apply to robots, too?' The case he builds goes much further though, and certainly provides food for thought." Update: 12/14 16:16 GMT by Z : This article is very similar to a discussion we had recently.

An anonymous reader writes "I was recently laid off, and during several of the interviews looking for a new job as a mid level IT manager, I was asked "So, I can just Google your name and find some of your work?" The answer is "yes", but searching for my name doesn't really bring up many results compared to searching for my online nickname which I have been using for about a decade. I am very tempted just to put that nickname on my resume. Is the professional, albeit technical, world ready for this step? Where should I put it? At the top or somewhere in the body?" And the other problem- how hard will it be to get a job when your nickname is something ridiculous. Boy I wish I would have thought of that in 95 ;)