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Submission + - Late Night Gaming Banned in Vietnam (vnanet.vn)

R3d M3rcury writes: Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communication has asked ISPs to block access to on-line games between 10:00PM and 8:00AM. 'The request, made on Wednesday, is another move from the authority to mitigate the side effects of online games. The request follows numerous stiff measures by the ministry to tackle the issue, including cutting internet access to agents at night beginning last September.'
Security

Submission + - Sophisticated New Android Trojan Discovered (securityweek.com) 1

wiredmikey writes: Security researchers have discovered a new sophisticated Trojan that has emerged in China that is affecting Android devices which can compromise a significant amount of personal data on a user’s phone and send it to remote servers.

Researchers from Lookout Mobile which discovered the Trojan, say the mobile malware is “The most sophisticated Android malware we’ve seen to date, Geinimi is also the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities. Once the malware is installed on a user’s phone, it has the potential to receive commands from a remote server that allow the owner of that server to control the phone.”

What makes the Trojan different than most “standard” mobile malware is that Geinimi is being “grafted” onto repackaged versions of legitimate applications, primarily games, and distributed in third-party Chinese Android app markets...

First Person Shooters (Games)

RAGE On iOS Shows Promise 102

Vigile writes "RAGE from id Software for iOS devices is finally available and has been tested over at PC Perspective. The game obviously looks impressive with a nearly 750MB download (and about double that when uncompressed) and not much else can rival it on the platform. The game itself is a rail-based shooter, making the touchscreen interface more intuitive and less cumbersome but it does take away some of the feeling of control in the game. Video of the game running is also included in the short review."
Science

Submission + - Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats, Oxford Scientists Say (foxnews.com) 2

Velcroman1 writes: Dog owners, this will confirm what you always thought. And cat owners, prepare to extend your claws: scientists at Oxford University claim canines are smarter than felines. And the reason, according to the researchers, is that dogs are more social animals and therefore have bigger brains than the more solitary-inclined cats. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, charted the evolutionary history of various mammals’ brains over 60 million years and found a link between the size of an animal’s brain in relation to its body and how socially active it was.
Facebook

Submission + - Google Asks Users To Complain Against Facebook (digitizor.com)

dkd903 writes: A kind of war has been going on recently between Facebook and Google over a contacts export issue. First, Google blocked Facebook access to the GMail contacts API. To this, Facebook responded back with a new method to get GMail contacts of an user (the download contacts option). And now Google has slapped back again at Facebook and asks users indirectly to file a data protectionism complaint against Facebook.

Now when a Facebook user clicks on the Download Your Contacts button on the Facebook import contact via GMail page, the user is then redirected to a new page on Google's server, which looks something like this:

Transportation

Submission + - Vans drive themselves across the world (techeye.net)

bossanovalithium writes: Four driverless electric vans successfully ended a 13,000-kilometre test drive from Italy to China which mirrored the journey from East to West carried out by Marco Polo in the Middle Ages.

The four vans, packed with navigation gear and other computer software drove themselves Across Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and the Gobi Desert without getting lost.

The vans arrived at Shanghai Expo. They had been equipped with four solar-powered laser scanners and seven video cameras that work together to detect and avoid obstacles.

Ubuntu

Submission + - Canonical designer demos Ubuntu context-aware UI (thinq.co.uk) 1

Blacklaw writes: Canonical's Christian Giordano has posted details of what he believes could be the future of user interface design in Ubuntu — a system that detects physical context.
Designed to be paired with a webcam or other sensor system, the concept is that the computer is able to detect where a user is in proximity to the display along with an idea of roughly what he or she might be doing. Using this information, the operating system — in this case, Ubuntu Linux — can automatically make changes to the screen layout. For example, when the system detects that the user has leaned back in his or her chair, the system automatically makes the currently playing video full-screen. Lean forward again, and the video returns to its previous windowed mode.

The Internet

Submission + - International Internet Treaty proposed by Europe (thinq.co.uk)

Stoobalou writes: Europe has proposed an Internet Treaty to protect the Internet from the political interference which threatens to break it up.

The draft international law has been compared to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which sought to prevent space exploration being pursued for anything less than the benefit of all human kind. The Internet Treaty would similarly seek to preserve the Internet as a global system of free communication that transcends national borders.

An early draft of the Treaty has come into the possession of THINQ.co.uk as governments around the world pile pressure on the United Nations to bring the Internet under political control. Their various hare-brained schemes threaten to make communication on the Internet conditional on criteria set by narrow political interests.

Linux

Submission + - Adobe releases new 64-bit Flash plugin for Linux (adobe.com) 1

TheDarkener writes: Adobe seems to have made an about face regarding their support for native 64-bit Linux support for Flash today, and released a new preview Flash plugin named "Square". This includes a native 64-bit version for Linux, which I have verified works on my Debian Lenny LTSP server by simply copying libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins — with sound (which I was never able to figure out with running the 32-bit version with nspluginwrapper and pulseaudio).
Media

Submission + - Open source VLC media player coming to iPad (thinq.co.uk)

Stoobalou writes: The people behind VLC, quite probably the most useful media player available right now, have submitted an iPod version to the Apple software police.

VLC — which is rightfully famous for having a go at playing just about any kind of audio or video file you care to throw at it — should appear some time next week, if it makes it through the often unfathomable approval process implemented by Apple.

The Open Source Video Lan Client has been tweaked to run on the iPod by software developer Applidium.

Iphone

Apple Relaxes iOS Development Tool Restrictions 347

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year Apple caused major upset among developers by updating the iPhone developer program license with clause 3.3.1. It basically stopped the use of cross-platform compilers, meaning Adobe Flash could not be used to develop an app for the App Store. The move also put into doubt which other development platforms could be used and generally caused a lot of confusion. Apple has just significantly relaxed that policy and allowed for the use of development tools, as long as 'the resulting apps do not download any code.'"
Music

UK Music Industry Calls For Truce With Technology 209

Stoobalou writes "The British music industry has called for a truce with the technology firms with whom it has till now fought a bitter battle over rights, royalties and file sharing. Feargal Sharkey, CEO of lobby group UK Music, told a conference in London this week that it was time for the music and technology industries to set aside their differences and strive instead toward a common goal: nothing less than the total global domination of British music."
Microsoft

Halo Reach Leaked To Filesharing Sites 160

Stoobalou writes "What appears to be the full version of Bungie's Halo Reach game has turned up on a number of file sharing sites. The hotly-anticipated multi-player shooter had been hosted on a private area of the Microsoft Live site in order for journalists to preview the release, but Microsoft has admitted that a security breach has meant that pirates have been able to bypass personal download codes given to writers. Disk images of the game are now appearing on a number of public torrent and P2P sites as well as on popular NZB aggregators and Usenet binaries newsgroups." The game isn't due to be released until September 14th. Microsoft is said to be "aggressively pursuing" whoever grabbed the files without their permission.
Security

Submission + - Halo Reach Code Leaked to Filesharing Sites (thinq.co.uk)

Stoobalou writes: What appears to be the entire code for Bungie's Halo Reach game has turned up on a number of file sharing sites.

The hotly-anticipated multi-player shooter had been hosted on a private area of the Microsoft Live site in order for journalists to preview the release, but Microsoft has admitted that a security breach has meant that pirates have been able to bypass personal download codes given to writers.

Disk images of the game are now appearing on a number of public torrent and P2P sites as well as on popular NZB aggregators and Usenet binaries newsgroups.

Displays

Sony Developing 3D Screen-Sharing Technology For Two Players 174

Stoobalou writes "Sony has recently published patent applications which will allow two-player 3D gaming on a single screen. The new technology could spell an end to split-screen gaming, but is unlikely to see the light of day for a few years at least. Sony's method would allow player one to see frames one and three whilst player two would see frames two and four. Current technology requires a display with a 120 Hz refresh rate so it seems likely that we'll have to wait for 240Hz screen technology to become commonplace before two-player 3D becomes a reality. PDF versions of the two applications are available."

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