Posts Tagged ‘cites’
EA to end Online Pass program, cites player disapproval
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Remember EA’s Online Pass program? If you’ve ever purchased one of the company’s games used, it probably rings a bell. The system was devised in 2010 as a way for the company to collect revenue from used game sales, requiring players of second-hand software to pay an additional fee to unlock multiplayer content. Now, EA says the program has run its course. “Many players didn’t respond to the format,” the company told GamesBeat. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.” The industry still isn’t completely sure how to handle used game sales, but at least this unpopular program is at an end.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: Joystiq
Source: GamesBeat
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Tim Cook downplays possibility of larger iPhone, cites quality, app trade-offs
Author: Brian McKinnell
With the sudden glut of 5-inch (and larger) smartphones hitting the market, one may wonder if Apple plans to introduce one of its own. In response to a question on today’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook maintained his stance against such a move because of his unwillingness to make tradeoffs in areas like resolution, quality and app compatibility caused by such a devices. He stated specifically that Apple would not ship such a phone “while such trade-offs exist”, leaving just enough wiggle room for a future announcement where it can claim all those issues have been solved.
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Microsoft publishes Law Enforcement Requests Report, cites 70,665 inquiries worldwide
Author: Brian McKinnell
Microsoft is the latest company striving to be more transparent in detailing how much user data it provides to law enforcement. Today it released the 2012 Law Enforcement Request, marking the first time Microsoft has ever revealed such statistics in an easily accessible document. “All of our major online services are covered in this report,” writes Brad Smith, the company’s VP of legal and corporate affairs. “In recent months, there has been broadening public interest in how often law enforcement agencies request customer data from technology companies and how our industry responds to these requests.” Smith openly credits Google and Twitter for leading the trend, saying Microsoft has “benefitted from the opportunity to learn from them.”
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Tags: 70665, cites, enforcement, inquiries, Microsoft, Publishes, report, requests, worldwide | 
No Comments »Google has no plans to develop Windows 8 or WP apps, cites lack of users
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If you’re eager to load up a Windows Phone or Windows 8 PC with dedicated Gmail or Google Drive apps, it’s time you ease up on the anticipation, as Mountain View isn’t bent on bringing apps to the platforms thanks to a lack of interest. “We have no plans to build out Windows apps,” Google Apps product management director Clay Bavor told V3. “We are very careful about where we invest and will go where the users are but they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8.” That might sound grim, but Bavor added that a change in user base would warrant applications brewed up by Page and Co. As it stands, however, Google’s focused on polishing its iOS and Android efforts, so Redmond devotees should get mighty comfortable with the search giant’s web-based offerings.
Filed under: Google
Via: Microsoft News
Source: V3
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Judge rules against Apple in Kodak patent dispute, cites disruption to next week’s auction
Author: Jade Kim
Is this Kodak’s second? It makes sure shaping up to be, as Bloomberg reports the when prominent imaging business has actually simply earned a slight, though substantial courtroom triumph against Apple. At stake is the ownership of ten patents related to digital imaging, two of which have been deemed incontestable by a Manhattan bankruptcy judge due to Cupertino’s late phase ownership filing. Mentioning potential disruptions to next Wednesday’s public sale, Judge Gropper ruled against Apple’s claims, while even striking down Kodak’s request for a summary judgment on the eight remaining IPs and leaving the door open for further dispute. So, though it could appear like the Rochester-based business is finally out of the woods, this definitely isn’t really the end of its misfortunes– Apple has now filed counterclaims and is seeking a transfer of the instance to district court. And if the Residence that Steve developed’s legal track record is any sort of sign, it’s not going down without an interminable match.
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Microsoft Bows Out Of CES 2013, Cites Marketing Transitions
Author: Christen Arquette
This year will be Microsoft’s last year at CES where the company usually runs the keynote and takes up a huge portion of the show floor. “In looking at all the ways that Microsoft is now reaching its’ customers today (its’ owned events, marketing campaigns, retail stores, etc.) this felt like a natural time to make this transition,” wrote an MS PR rep.
This will also be the last time CEO Steve Ballmer keynotes the show.
The software (and hardware) giant usually commanded a great swathe of the CES show floor including tents outside the convention center. Traditionally a PC-centric show, CES has slowly moved into an event dedicated to iPhone/iPod accessories and, to a lesser extent, other electronics including cameras, PC components, and mobile devices. Because there are currently a plethora of potential shows where Microsoft could exhibit, including both MWC in Barcelona and CTIA for mobile and its own events for Windows-related news, not to mention a huge presence at E3 for Xbox, it’s clear that the audience at CES is now less important to Microsoft on the aggregate.
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CyanogenMod team bails on Samsung Vibrant, cites inability to dial ’911′ as cause
Author: Nancy Kennedy
CyanogenMod developers responsible for the Samsung Vibrant have abandoned support for the phone after efforts to enable 911 emergency access turned fruitless. The team suggests the issue can’t be overcome without source code from Samsung, as all means to resolve the issue with open source code have failed. While it’s no doubt an unfortunate revelation for Vibrant owners, the move is certainly the most responsible route for developers and users alike. Absent any intervention from the Korean manufacturer — which has previously shown love to the CyanogenMod project — it appears that the Vibrant has met an impasse for the time being.
CyanogenMod team bails on Samsung Vibrant, cites inability to dial ’911′ as cause originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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No Comments »Apple Again Cites Inaccurate Evidence in Samsung Patent Case
Author: Ang Nguyen
Apple Again Cites Inaccurate Evidence in Samsung Patent Case
By Andreas Udo de Haes, webwereld.nl- Apple has filed inaccurate evidence again in a case against Samsung, this time in the Netherlands, where the company is arguing Samsung's Galaxy S smartphones are too similar to its iPhone 3G. …
Read more on PCWorld
Android Market arrives in the UK… for Samsung Galaxy S
Unfortunately, the dolled-up new Android Market is only interested in making friends with the Samsung Galaxy S for now. Boo. The Android Market in its original form was pretty crap, for lack of a more intellectual term. The makeover introduces a sexy …
Read more on Mobot.net (blog)
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O2 UK spurns BlackBerry PlayBook, cites issues with ‘end to end customer experience’
Author: Tech Blogger
Today is the PlayBook’s official launch day in the UK, but one of the island kingdom’s biggest mobile players won’t be taking part. O2 has apparently been reaching out to subscribers who’ve expressed an interest in acquiring RIM’s 7-inch tablet on the network with word that the company “will not be selling the device.” The communiqué to those users states that “unfortunately there are some issues with the end to end customer experience,” though O2 continues to work with RIM on future PlayBook products and releases and doesn’t rule out carrying this particular slate in the future. We reached out for an official statement and the company confirmed that it has no plans to sell the PlayBook at this time. Maybe once it gets a native email client, eh?
[Thanks, Stephan]
O2 UK spurns BlackBerry PlayBook, cites issues with ‘end to end customer experience’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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China Switches To Homegrown CPUs For Supercomputers, Cites “Dependence On Foreign Technologyâ€
Author: Troy Sorbo
We’ve had a few editorials here lately regarding China. I wrote about our moral hypocrisy in disapproving of factory conditions there, and John wrote how the lowest-price-possible culture still extant in much Chinese manufacturing is harmful in a number of ways. Throughout, I think there has always been a sort of grudging admiration for the way that country is capable of single-mindedly pursuing certain difficult goals via public-private alignment, investing billions in infrastructure in order to be a market leader ten or twenty years down the line.
One development I wasn’t aware of was their effort to separate themselves from western companies in the computing field. While many of the chip manufacturers and specialized factories used by Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ARM are located in China, the design work is largely done internally, and in this respect Intel et al. are literally decades ahead of the “competition,” which really is nothing of the sort. This is something China wants to fix — and they’re taking concrete steps towards doing so.
They’re now in the process of a big switch to Chinese-made processors in their supercomputers, the kinds of room-filling machines you find at research centers, universities, military facilities, and so on. Currently, the National University of Defense Technology’s “Tianhe-1A” (Milky Way/Sky River) is the world’s fastest supercomputer, and it runs on Intel and Nvidia chips — 21,522 of them, comprising around 2.5 petaflops of data-crunching power. But the new “Dawning 6000″ is to be built entirely from “Loongsoon” chips, designed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and built, ironically, by a European company, ST Microelectronics. It will have less than half the processing power of Tianhe-1A.
The chief designer of the new chips, Hu Weiwu, told the People’s Daily regarding the chip’s origins: “Our information industry was using foreign technology. However, just like a country’s industry cannot always depend on foreign steel and oil, China’s information industry needs its own CPU.” Admirable! But, as I mentioned in Our Great Sin, many in American industries are loath to take this step. The benefits of a global manufacturing economy are too convenient, and the prices too competitive, for us to cut ties.
Imagine the US and China are playing with a bunch of toys. The US is mad that many of the toys belong to the China, but we’re unwilling to invest in a toybox as big as the other guy’s. China, on the other hand, sees the toys the US has and starts building new ones to replace them, so if the US packs up and leaves, China won’t have anything to play with. Is this metaphor too much? Probably.
This isn’t a recent development, and it isn’t a “hobby.” China’s been making CPUs for almost 10 years now, though it’s only recently that they’ve even begun to approach the level of effectiveness provided by western systems. And even then, Hu cautions that “it still needs another decade before China-made chips meet the needs of the domestic market. Hopefully after two decades, we will be able to sell our China-made CPUs to the US just like we are selling clothes and shoes.”
In other words, they may be able to manufacture our chips at a 20nm level, but their CPU design and software are still pretty much in the dark ages. Tianhe-1A runs a Linux-based system (which, although it has largely American origins, should really be considered the first post-national OS) and uses a MIPS architecture that emulates x86. I’ll give the computer scientists reading this a moment to clean the coffee off their monitors. But yes, this is where they’re at, and although they’re a decade from producing a world-friendly laptop or mobile that’s Chinese from processor to case to OS, make no mistake: they’re taking dead aim.
The point is they’re cutting the global cord when it comes to CPUs, a very difficult thing to do when the entire world runs on just a few brands, and those brands spend billions every year to maintain market dominance. Splitting off from the majors and declaring independence, no matter the cost. Sound familiar? Yeah, for a long time that was kind of the American way. We still maintain a huge advantage in internet-based properties, IP, biotech, and culture, but in areas we’re trailing, it seems we don’t have the backbone to say “your product may be better and cheaper, but we’re going to build our own, because dammit, that’s what we do.”
Perhaps we’re reaching the end of a period of natural Chinese ascendancy (as they emerge from industrialization hell and mobilize their billion-strong human resources on the world more efficiently) and perhaps not, but tech is notoriously difficult to predict, and a few breakthroughs and funding rounds might put the US on top in growing fields like battery tech or low-carbon manufacturing. It’s too late for us to lead the world in the areas China specializes in, and if we’re not careful, their sovereign writs of bootstrapping will only increase the number of those areas.
It sounds a bit jingoistic, but it’s really not (though I’m aware my saying so doesn’t make it so); I’d feel the same way if it were France, Brazil, or Canada opting out of the microprocessor hegemony. It’s just that nobody likes the kid with all the toys.
[via MIT Technology Review]
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Tags: “Dependence, China, cites, CPUs, Foreign, HomeGrown, supercomputers, switches, Technology†|
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