Yahoo confirmed Thursday that more than 400,000 user e-mail addresses
and passwords have been compromised and posted online. The hackers
claim to be do-gooders, breaking into Yahoo to shine a light on its
potentially lax security.
Regardless of their intentions, the passwords are now online for
everyone to see. The strike comes just a month after millions of
passwords leaked onto the Internet. LinkedIn, the business-oriented
social network, confirmed that nearly 6.5 million user passwords had
wound up on websites frequented by criminal hackers. The same week,
dating site eHarmony and the Internet radio service Last.fm acknowledged
additional breaches that exposed the passwords of at least 1.5 million
users.
If you use any of these sites, change your passwords immediately.
This rapid-fire series of announcements raises the question: Why
would hackers target these sites? What could possibly be culled from
someone's online résumé and dating history?
A lot, says Marian Merritt, Internet-safety advocate for the computer
security company Symantec. People on LinkedIn share all kinds of
information about their career history – names, associations, and
department titles. Armed with details about someone's past, a hacker
might pose as a former co-worker or pretend to be that person in order
to scam people out of money.
"Oh, remember? We worked on this project back in '82," says Ms.
Merritt, playing the part of a hacker who's laying the groundwork for a
con. "I'm looking for X. Can you help me?"
This kind of scheme, called "spear phishing," requires a lot
of effort, but going after the right target can be very lucrative. "The
definition of a 'big fish' isn't necessarily the CEO of a corporation,"
says Merritt. "People often forget that churches manage money,
membership dues, and whatever fundraisers. They have millions of dollars
going through transactions, and it may be managed by somebody that
doesn't have good security training because they're a volunteer or
[work] part time."
Exposed passwords could also unlock other parts of a person's digital
life. At the moment, it's unclear whether the ill-gotten passwords came
with the corresponding usernames. Just in case, Gary Davis advises
people to change passwords not only on the breached networks, but also
on any website where they used the same login information.
"If I use the word 'password' as my password, and I use the e-mail
address 'normangdavis,' well they can try that [combination] at my bank
and see if that gets them in," says Mr. Davis, worldwide product
marketing lead for security firm McAfee.
Fed up with remembering different passwords? Symantec and McAfee
offer password managers. The paid services create unique logins for
every site you use. You memorize a single password for the service – the
software takes care of the rest.
Ford to recall more than 10,000 Escapes for carpet problem
The recalled vehicles, manufactured from March 8 through June 7, feature mispositioned carpet padding in the center console trim panel. That can cause the driver to hit the side of the brake pedal when moving the foot from the accelerator pedal, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That could increase stopping distances and the risk of a crash, the agency said.
Dealers will remove the carpet padding and left-side console trim panel and replace it for free. The recall is expected to begin on July 23.
NHTSA said 8,226 vehicles would be recalled in the U.S.
Ford spokeswoman Marcey Zwiebel told the Associated Press that an additional 2,000 Escape vehicles in Canada and a couple of hundred in Mexico would also be affected. She said the automaker had not received any reports of accidents or injuries related to the problem.
Nokia Lumia 900 Drops to $49.99 as Phonemaker Seeks Comeback
The price of Nokia Oyj (NOK1V)’s Lumia 900, which the company is counting on to challenge the iPhone and Android devices, was cut in half to $49.99 at AT&T Inc. (T) (T) stores.
The product is available at that price with a two-year commitment, according to AT&T’s website. AT&T began offering the phone in April, following the debut of the Lumia lineup in the U.S. on T-Mobile USA’s network in January.
North America was the only region where Espoo, Finland- based Nokia saw handset shipments grow sequentially in the first quarter, helped by the release of the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile. Still, the 600,000 units shipped marked a 50 percent decline from a year earlier. Sales of the Lumia on AT&T started after the quarter ended, so its impact won’t be seen until Nokia reports its next quarterly results on July 19.
The price cut was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The product is available at that price with a two-year commitment, according to AT&T’s website. AT&T began offering the phone in April, following the debut of the Lumia lineup in the U.S. on T-Mobile USA’s network in January.
North America was the only region where Espoo, Finland- based Nokia saw handset shipments grow sequentially in the first quarter, helped by the release of the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile. Still, the 600,000 units shipped marked a 50 percent decline from a year earlier. Sales of the Lumia on AT&T started after the quarter ended, so its impact won’t be seen until Nokia reports its next quarterly results on July 19.
The price cut was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.
'Dark Knight Rises,' But Saga Ends For Director Nolan
The new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, is perhaps the
most anticipated movie of the summer. It's the last film in the Batman
trilogy that writer-director Christopher Nolan has crafted over the past
7 years.Nolan wanted The Dark Knight Rises, which will be released in theaters July 20, to feel like a historical epic. As he tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, he looked to films like Fritz Lang's Metropolis, David Lean's Dr. Zhivago, and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
On what inspired him to be a film director
"The films of Ridley Scott, particularly Alien and Blade Runner.
Watching those films and realizing that even though the stories were
different, the actors were different, something was connecting these
films, the same mind was behind them. And realizing that, 'Oh, that's
this guy, Ridley Scott, he's the director. He's getting to really define
those movies.' I think that really inspired me to want to specifically
be a director." On why Batman is his favorite superhero
"For me the character of Batman is the most human and relatable of superheros. He doesn't have super powers — base level he's just a guy who likes to do a lot of push-ups. He's a self-created hero."
On the state of Bruce Wayne and Gotham at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises
We have to be seeing a Gotham where — at least superficially — Batman's not needed. Because the sacrifice that Gordon helps him make at the end of The Dark Knight has to mean something. So we're finding a Bruce Wayne who's living in self-imposed isolation for eight years, he's locked himself up in a wing of Wayne Manor, very much in the manner of Howard Hughes in his sort of Las Vegas period.
On the villain, Bane
"He represents almost a flip-side of Bruce Wayne, somebody Bruce Wayne might have become in a parallel universe or something."
On what he will miss most about ending his Batman run
"The thing I'm going to miss the most about the great privilege of working with these characters is the built-in connection they have with the audience. That lets you tell a story in this incredibly-heightened fashion, what I call this "operatic-style," and I will miss that enormously because you can't do that with characters you make up, you can't assume that investment on the part of the audience."
Stallone, Schwarzenegger in fighting form for "Expendables 2"
(Reuters) - Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and their fellow aging action heroes are back in fighting form for new movie "The Expendables 2," thrilling crowds at the giant Comic-Con pop culture event with footage from the upcoming film.
The new movie, a sequel to 2010's surprise hit about a group of rebel mercenaries out to kill a brutal military leader, appeared similar to the first one in film clips shown Thursday with an emphasis on old-school shootouts over sci-fi fantasy.
"Rambo" and "Rocky" actor Stallone, 66, introduced Schwarzenegger, 64, the former governor of California and star of the "Terminator" movies, to the Comic-Con crowd as "one of my fellow brothers in the hard art business ... a true one-of-a-kind movie star, the likes of whom we'll never see again."
"The Expendables" hit theaters in August 2010 with a tale of aging mercenaries on a new assignment and was positioned as a return to classic 1980s action and adventure versus the Spider-Man and Batman film franchises that rule box offices today.
The film was loaded with older actions stars such as Bruce Willis, and the formula worked well as the movie blasted its way to nearly $275 million at worldwide box offices.
For the sequel, in theaters on August 17, Stallone and Schwarzenegger reunite with Willis, Chuck Norris, Jet-Li, Jason Statham and others.
"The first one was more searching for what was going to work. Is it more dramatic, comedic? But on the second one, you find out what works from the first one, and you try to amplify it," Stallone told the Comic-Con crowd.
"You have the same playbook ... if you have it all together, the second one can surpass the first one, and I think we achieved that."
For the second film, Hollywood's old action heroes set out on another dangerous assignment where Stallone said the Expendables were pushed to the extreme. Film clips showed them in explosive situations, slick fight scenes and trading tough-guy comments with each other.
Stallone said recent Hollywood heroes were "a different kind of action star, more futuristic, scientific, technical. (They) don't have to spend their life pumping iron."
He added that the newer heroes were still valid for their age group, as "each generation has to create their own heroes and each generation redefines the heroes they like to adore."
Much of the audience was filled with fans who have grown up idolizing the old-school heroes including Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and the actors thanked them for their loyalty and dedication.
"The action genre is like a religion, you get your beliefs from these movies, you get your right and wrong from these movies, you get your inspiration," said another of the film's stars, Terry Crews.
Following the panel, Schwarzenegger was given an award from Comic-Con for his contributions and achievements to the film arts and pop culture.
"Rambo" and "Rocky" actor Stallone, 66, introduced Schwarzenegger, 64, the former governor of California and star of the "Terminator" movies, to the Comic-Con crowd as "one of my fellow brothers in the hard art business ... a true one-of-a-kind movie star, the likes of whom we'll never see again."
"The Expendables" hit theaters in August 2010 with a tale of aging mercenaries on a new assignment and was positioned as a return to classic 1980s action and adventure versus the Spider-Man and Batman film franchises that rule box offices today.
The film was loaded with older actions stars such as Bruce Willis, and the formula worked well as the movie blasted its way to nearly $275 million at worldwide box offices.
For the sequel, in theaters on August 17, Stallone and Schwarzenegger reunite with Willis, Chuck Norris, Jet-Li, Jason Statham and others.
"The first one was more searching for what was going to work. Is it more dramatic, comedic? But on the second one, you find out what works from the first one, and you try to amplify it," Stallone told the Comic-Con crowd.
"You have the same playbook ... if you have it all together, the second one can surpass the first one, and I think we achieved that."
For the second film, Hollywood's old action heroes set out on another dangerous assignment where Stallone said the Expendables were pushed to the extreme. Film clips showed them in explosive situations, slick fight scenes and trading tough-guy comments with each other.
Stallone said recent Hollywood heroes were "a different kind of action star, more futuristic, scientific, technical. (They) don't have to spend their life pumping iron."
He added that the newer heroes were still valid for their age group, as "each generation has to create their own heroes and each generation redefines the heroes they like to adore."
Much of the audience was filled with fans who have grown up idolizing the old-school heroes including Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and the actors thanked them for their loyalty and dedication.
"The action genre is like a religion, you get your beliefs from these movies, you get your right and wrong from these movies, you get your inspiration," said another of the film's stars, Terry Crews.
Following the panel, Schwarzenegger was given an award from Comic-Con for his contributions and achievements to the film arts and pop culture.
Symantec antivirus software update crashes some PCs
A recent update to Symantec's antivirus software rendered some
Windows-based PCs inoperable, the security software maker disclosed
Friday.
An update earlier this week to Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 antivirus software for businesses caused some Windows XP-based computers to crash repeatedly with a "blue screen of death," the company revealed on its Web site.
"On July 11th, 2012 Symantec Security Response started receiving reports of customers experiencing blue screens after applying the July 11th revision 18 definitions," Orla Cox, of Symantec Security Response, wrote this post "Machines may continue to blue screen after they reboot. This problem only appears to occur on Windows XP machines."
In an update, the company said the crashes were limited to XP machines running Endpoint Protection 12.1 and certain software from Norton. Once the cause was identified, Symantec issued a rollback of signatures on Thursday, the company said.
The company said it learned of the issue Wednesday night from customers, who said they were forced to manually remove the software from disabled machines, a process they described as time consuming.
After Facebook freeze, IPO market starts to thaw
NEW YORK (AP) — With new public stock offerings for guitar maker Fender and travel booking website Kayak on deck next week, there are signs demand is starting to grow for IPOs after a five-week freeze triggered by a steep decline in financial markets and exacerbated by Facebook's rocky May 18 debut.
Five companies are scheduled to go public next week alone, including Fender, Kayak and Palo Alto Networks,
a maker of computer network security products. After Facebook, just
four deals made it to market by the end of June, marking the longest
stretch without an initial public offering of stock since August-October
2011. Stocks sank then in the wake of the U.S. debt limit showdown and a
deepening European financial crisis.
The resurgence now is a welcome indication that dealmakers are regaining confidence about raising money through IPOs.
But the situation is far from rosy.
There
are 68 companies expected to raise $14.4 billion through IPOs later
this year, according to research firm Dealogic, Last year at this time
there were almost double that amount of companies — 135, looking to
raise $23.6 billion.
"If the
market stays healthy — the overall market — I think we will see a lot of
IPO activity in the second half," said Nick Einhorn, an analyst with
Renaissance Capital. But another plunge in stock markets could make it difficult for companies to raise money by selling shares.
The types of companies that try to raise money will also affect the IPO market.
Mutual funds and the other big investors who tend to buy IPO shares are
less likely now to be attracted to technology companies like social networks
and games maker Zynga Inc. They've shifted to business technology
companies such as Palo Alto Networks, which they consider more stable.
Stocks
of several of these kinds of companies have performed well since their
IPOs. ServiceNow Inc., a provider of so-called "cloud" technology
services to companies, went public in late June, pricing at $18, above
its expected range of $15 to $17. The stock has risen 34 percent from
its debut. Jive Software Inc., which makes internal social networks for
corporations, started trading in December and has climbed 56 percent
from its IPO price.
Well-known
consumer brands also help drum up excitement for IPOs among retail
investors, the "regular" people who buy and sell stocks. There are high
hopes for Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the company behind the
famous Fender Stratocaster electric guitars. It's looking to raise up to
$160.5 million in its IPO next week.
Several
other consumer-oriented deals could ignite excitement later this year,
said Morningstar analyst James Krapfel, citing Bloomin' Brands Inc., the
owner of Outback Steakhouse; English professional soccer club
Manchester United; and Coty Inc., maker of OPI nail polish and Jennifer
Lopez perfume. Krapfel doesn't expect much demand for deals in
industries sensitive to economic concerns and weak commodity prices such
as industrial and energy companies.
But
even companies in industries considered appealing will have a hard time
if the broader markets don't cooperate. Fears about the faltering
global economy stalled the IPO market in May, when economic worries
drove the Standard & Poor's 500 index down 6.3 percent. In June, the
index rallied 4 percent, but the IPO market tends to lag the broader
market and reacts to the prior month's decline.
That's
one reason experts like Einhorn remain wary. The S&P 500 is down 2
percent in July and a sluggish U.S. economy, signs of slowing growth in
China and financial crises in Europe may douse enthusiasm. Also, summer
is traditionally a slow time for making deals since many bank executives
take vacation in July and August.
And
then there's the memory of Facebook's disappointing debut. The stock
was expected to take off and ignite investor demand for other IPOs.
Instead, it closed up just 23 cents from its IPO price of $38 on its
first day of trading. The stock has fallen about 19 percent since then
and now trades around $31.
Facebook's
decline after its long-awaited, highly anticipated IPO of the social
network was "no question" a big negative for the IPO market, so the more
time passes, the better, said Sam Hamadeh, the CEO of PrivCo, a
research firm that follows privately held companies.
On
the plus side, investors may take heart from a spurt of IPO activity at
the end of last quarter. The stocks of all four companies that went
public in the last week of June are trading at or above their IPO price.
Next
week's scheduled IPOs include Fender, the travel website Kayak Software
Corp., which expects to raise as much as $87.5 million; network
security company Palo Alto Networks Inc., hoping to fetch as much as
$229.4 million; Five Below Inc., a discount teen retailer, seeking to
raise up to $134.4 million, and biotech company Durata Therapeutics
Inc., which could raise up to $81.9 million.
Serena wins at Stanford in final Olympic tuneup
STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Serena Williams overcame a shaky start and two service breaks to beat lucky loser Coco Vandeweghe 7-5, 6-3 on Sunday for her second straight Bank of the West Classic title.
Eight
days after winning Wimbledon, Williams saved a set point and won the
final four games of the opening set. It was the 43rd WTA Tour
championship of Williams' career, tying older sister Venus for the most
among active players.
The first all-American WTA final on home soil in eight years was hardly a one-sided affair.
The
20-year-old Vandeweghe, who failed to make it out of qualifying and got
into the main draw only when Bojana Jovanovski withdrew with an injury,
moved the 14-time Grand Slam champion and her highlighter-yellow outfit
all over the court to give Williams her only real challenge of the
week.
The final result was still the same.Williams whipped a backhand crosscourt that Vandeweghe sent sailing wide for an early break to go ahead 2-0. In what looked to be another rout by Williams, the young American showed some fight.
Vandeweghe
immediately broke twice in the first set — both with Williams
struggling on tosses into the sunny side of the court — and ripped a 121
mph ace in her next game. But serving for the set at 5-4, Vandeweghe
crumbled when she had the chance to put a dent into Williams' final
tuneup before the London Olympics.
All it took was one point.
Williams walloped a soft second serve with another backhand crosscourt to save a set point.
And on the sixth break chance of the game, Vandeweghe double-faulted — a
theme throughout a sun-splashed afternoon in the biggest moments of the
match.
She finished with five double-faults and six aces.
Williams didn't fare much better with nine aces and six double-faults,
but she won 81 percent of her first serve points and waited for her
opponent to make mistakes.
Vandeweghe
again double-faulted to give Williams a set point at 6-5, and Williams
smacked a another backhand crosscourt that Vandeweghe barely got a
racket on to take the set. Williams gave a light fist pump and stayed
steady, just as she had done for most of the last month in her latest
rise up the rankings.
Another double-fault by Vandeweghe on break
point gave Williams a 3-1 lead in the second set. Williams served out
the match and put away one final forehand winner on match point, giving
another light fist pump and showing little emotion — especially compared
to her hug-filled celebration with family eight days earlier on
Wimbledon's grass.The fourth-ranked Williams, still jet-lagged from traveling more than 5,000 miles and eight time zones from the All England Club, never looked at her dominating best at Stanford. But she did exactly what she wanted all week: just win.
Not
only did she defend her points to stay on track to regain the No. 1
world ranking, she did it on a court that will forever hold a special
place in her heart. The tournament is where Williams' comeback took
shape last year when she beat Marion Bartoli in the finals for her first
WTA title since returning from blood clots in her lugs and two foot
operations that threatened her life and career for almost a year.
The
last player to win consecutive titles at Stanford was Kim Clijsters in
2005-06. Clijsters is also second behind the Williams sisters with 41
career WTA titles.
The last all-American final at home on the WTA Tour came in 2004, when Lindsay Davenport topped Williams in Los Angeles.
Blackberry maker loses patent suit over software
A federal jury in San Francisco has found beleaguered Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd. liable for $147.2 million in damages for infringing on patents held by Mformation Technologies Inc.
Amar Thakur, a lawyer for Mformation, said Saturday that the verdict late Friday followed a three-week trial and a week of deliberations by an eight-person jury.
Mformation, of Edison, N.J., sued Research in Motion in October 2008, alleging that Canada-based RIM infringed on its 1999 invention for remotely managing wireless devices. Mformation's software allows companies to remotely access employee cell phones to do software upgrades, change passwords or to wipe data from phones that have been stolen.
Officials at RIM, which has been struggling with plummeting sales, a declining stock and other problems, did not provide a comment Saturday.
Thakur said the jury ruled that Research in Motion should pay his client $8 for each of the 18.4 million Blackberrys that were connected to the Blackberry Enterprise Server, from the day the lawsuit was filed until the time of the trial. That's a total of $147.2 million.
He said the software at issue is the heart of the business of Mformation, a privately held company with several hundred employees.
"We believe it's been fundamental to the success of Research in Motion," Thakur told The Associated Press.
The patent at issue was filed in 2001 and issued in 2005, he said.
RIM, of Waterloo, Ontario, has previously denied it did anything wrong.
RIM has seen its business crumble as it increasingly loses market share. Today's consumers want smartphones that go far beyond handling e-mail and phone calls, with built-in cameras and other cool functions.
Particularly telling is the plunge in the Blackberry's U.S. market share. It's dropped from 41 percent in 2007, the year the first iPhone came out, to below 4 percent in the first three months of this year, according to research firm IDC.
Meanwhile, RIM will miss a chance to bounce back because of repeated delays on its BlackBerry 10 operating software, which is intended to help Blackberrys catch up to rivals such as the iPhone and smartphones running Google's Android software. Not only will devices with the new Blackberry software miss the crucial holiday shopping season, they'll have even more competition when they do go on sale, including a new iPhone expected from Apple this fall.
Last month, RIM reported weaker than expected results. For the quarter that ended on June 2, it lost $518 million, or 99 cents a share. Even after excluding impairment charges, the loss was 37 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting a 3-cent per share loss. Revenue fell 43 percent to $2.8 billion, and RIM said it will be cutting 5,000 jobs, or 30 percent of its workforce.
The company's stock, which traded for more than $30 less than a year ago, has recently dropped below $8, near a nine-year low. On Friday, the stock dropped another 2.4 percent to close at $7.24.
Amar Thakur, a lawyer for Mformation, said Saturday that the verdict late Friday followed a three-week trial and a week of deliberations by an eight-person jury.
Mformation, of Edison, N.J., sued Research in Motion in October 2008, alleging that Canada-based RIM infringed on its 1999 invention for remotely managing wireless devices. Mformation's software allows companies to remotely access employee cell phones to do software upgrades, change passwords or to wipe data from phones that have been stolen.
Officials at RIM, which has been struggling with plummeting sales, a declining stock and other problems, did not provide a comment Saturday.
Thakur said the jury ruled that Research in Motion should pay his client $8 for each of the 18.4 million Blackberrys that were connected to the Blackberry Enterprise Server, from the day the lawsuit was filed until the time of the trial. That's a total of $147.2 million.
He said the software at issue is the heart of the business of Mformation, a privately held company with several hundred employees.
"We believe it's been fundamental to the success of Research in Motion," Thakur told The Associated Press.
The patent at issue was filed in 2001 and issued in 2005, he said.
RIM, of Waterloo, Ontario, has previously denied it did anything wrong.
RIM has seen its business crumble as it increasingly loses market share. Today's consumers want smartphones that go far beyond handling e-mail and phone calls, with built-in cameras and other cool functions.
Particularly telling is the plunge in the Blackberry's U.S. market share. It's dropped from 41 percent in 2007, the year the first iPhone came out, to below 4 percent in the first three months of this year, according to research firm IDC.
Meanwhile, RIM will miss a chance to bounce back because of repeated delays on its BlackBerry 10 operating software, which is intended to help Blackberrys catch up to rivals such as the iPhone and smartphones running Google's Android software. Not only will devices with the new Blackberry software miss the crucial holiday shopping season, they'll have even more competition when they do go on sale, including a new iPhone expected from Apple this fall.
Last month, RIM reported weaker than expected results. For the quarter that ended on June 2, it lost $518 million, or 99 cents a share. Even after excluding impairment charges, the loss was 37 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting a 3-cent per share loss. Revenue fell 43 percent to $2.8 billion, and RIM said it will be cutting 5,000 jobs, or 30 percent of its workforce.
The company's stock, which traded for more than $30 less than a year ago, has recently dropped below $8, near a nine-year low. On Friday, the stock dropped another 2.4 percent to close at $7.24.
Farmer plants heart-shaped meadow for late wife
A devoted farmer painstakingly planted a tribute to his late wife, Janet, using 6,000 oak trees to etch out a giant heart in the middle of his field in South Gloucestershire, England. Howes, 70, and a gardener spent weeks planning and setting out each oak after his wife died suddenly 15 years ago. He planted the fledgling trees across a six-acre field after carefully marking out a heart shape in one half of the grass, with the heart pointing in the direction of her childhood home. The stunning crop was captured in its full beauty after a balloonist sailed over the farmhouse and photographed the field from the air.
A Skateboard to Pique Your Imagination
When you call your motorized skateboard the Board of Awesomeness, it takes some confidence. But rigging a tablet computer and a Microsoft Kinect to control the motorized skateboard is undeniably pretty awesome.
The designers at Chaotic Moon Labs, whose trademark slogan is "We're Smarter Than You" probably don't need our reassurance.
We went down to their design studios, or as they call it, their "fortified zombie-proof bunker" to give the board a ride.
The Board of Awesomeness actually has a sibling called the Board of Imagination, which is controlled by your mind, via an EMOTIV brain wave helmet. The helmet reads your mind and when you think go, it goes, and when you think stop, it stops.
Unfortunately, mere hours before we got there the helmet broke when those aforementioned zombies tried to get into the bunker and broke the EMOTIV helmet. At least that's how they explained it to us.
There wasn't a soldering gun in the state of Texas with the capability to fix it. So with one board down it was Awesomeness's time to shine.
And while a brain controlled skateboard sounds pretty fun, it's fitting that we're featuring a Kinect controlled skateboard on This Could Be Big, because if there was a device that could go viral, it's the Kinect.
The $150 hands free controller that came out in 2010 has taken on a life of its own. Even Microsoft, which was initially unhappy with their device being repurposed has grown accepting. People have taken the controller and hacked it to steer a quadracopter, built a medical body scanner, even attach it to a grocery cart that meets you at the door.
Or in this case, an off-road skateboard that goes 35mph. Let's see how it works.
The designers at Chaotic Moon Labs, whose trademark slogan is "We're Smarter Than You" probably don't need our reassurance.
We went down to their design studios, or as they call it, their "fortified zombie-proof bunker" to give the board a ride.
The Board of Awesomeness actually has a sibling called the Board of Imagination, which is controlled by your mind, via an EMOTIV brain wave helmet. The helmet reads your mind and when you think go, it goes, and when you think stop, it stops.
Unfortunately, mere hours before we got there the helmet broke when those aforementioned zombies tried to get into the bunker and broke the EMOTIV helmet. At least that's how they explained it to us.
There wasn't a soldering gun in the state of Texas with the capability to fix it. So with one board down it was Awesomeness's time to shine.
And while a brain controlled skateboard sounds pretty fun, it's fitting that we're featuring a Kinect controlled skateboard on This Could Be Big, because if there was a device that could go viral, it's the Kinect.
The $150 hands free controller that came out in 2010 has taken on a life of its own. Even Microsoft, which was initially unhappy with their device being repurposed has grown accepting. People have taken the controller and hacked it to steer a quadracopter, built a medical body scanner, even attach it to a grocery cart that meets you at the door.
Or in this case, an off-road skateboard that goes 35mph. Let's see how it works.
Oscar-winning actress Celeste Holm dies at 95
NEW YORK (AP) — Celeste Holm, a versatile, bright-eyed blonde who soared to Broadway fame in "Oklahoma!" and won an Oscar in "Gentleman's Agreement" but whose last years were filled with financial difficulty and estrangement from her sons, died Sunday, a relative said. She was 95.Holm had been hospitalized about two weeks ago with dehydration. She asked her husband on Friday to bring her home and spent her final days with her husband, Frank Basile, and other relatives and close friends by her side, said Amy Phillips, a great-niece of Holm's.
Holm died around 3:30 a.m. at her longtime apartment on Central Park West, located in the same building where Robert De Niro lives and where a fire broke out last month, Phillips said.
"I think she wanted to be here, in her home, among her things, with people who loved her," she said.
In a career that spanned more than half a century, Holm played everyone from Ado Annie — the girl who just can't say no in "Oklahoma!"— to a worldly theatrical agent in the 1991 comedy "I Hate Hamlet" to guest star turns on TV shows such as "Fantasy Island" and "Love Boat II" to Bette Davis' best friend in "All About Eve."
She won the Academy Award in 1947 for best supporting actress for her performance in "Gentleman's Agreement" and received Oscar nominations for "Come to the Stable" (1949) and "All About Eve" (1950).
Holm was also known for her untiring charity work — at one time she served on nine boards — and was a board member emeritus of the National Mental Health Association.
She was once president of the Creative Arts Rehabilitation Center, which treats emotionally disturbed people using arts therapies. Over the years, she raised $20,000 for UNICEF by charging 50 cents apiece for autographs.
President Ronald Reagan appointed her to a six-year term on the National Council on the Arts in 1982. In New York, she was active in the Save the Theatres Committee and was once arrested during a vigorous protest against the demolition of several theaters.
But late in her life she was in a bitter, multi-year family legal battle that pitted her two sons against her and her fifth husband — former waiter Basile, whom she married in 2004 and was more than 45 years her junior. The court fight over investments and inheritance wiped away much of her savings and left her dependent on Social Security. The actress and her sons no longer spoke, and she was sued for overdue maintenance and legal fees on her Manhattan apartment.
The future Broadway star was born in New York on April 29, 1917, the daughter of Norwegian-born Theodore Holm, who worked for the American branch of Lloyd's of London, and Jean Parke Holm, a painter and writer.
She was smitten by the theater as a 3-year-old when her grandmother took her to see ballerina Anna Pavlova. "There she was, being tossed in midair, caught, no mistakes, no falls. She never knew what an impression she made," Holm recalled years later.
She attended 14 schools growing up, including the Lycee Victor Duryui in Paris when her mother was there for an exhibition of her paintings. She studied ballet for 10 years.
Her first Broadway success came in 1939 in the cast of William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life." But it was her creation of the role of man-crazy Ado Annie Carnes in the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical "Oklahoma!" in 1943 that really impressed the critics.
She only auditioned for the role because of World War II, she said years later. "There was a need for entertainers in Army camps and hospitals. The only way you could do that was if you were singing in something."
Holm was hired by La Vie Parisienne, and later by the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel to sing to their late-night supper club audiences after the "Oklahoma!" curtain fell.
The slender, blue-eyed blonde moved west to pursue a film career. "Hollywood is a good place to learn how to eat a salad without smearing your lipstick," she would say.
"Oscar Hammerstein told me, 'You won't like it,'" and he was right, she said. Hollywood "was just too artificial. The values are entirely different. That balmy climate is so deceptive." She returned to New York after several years.
Her well-known films included "The Tender Trap" and "High Society" but others were less memorable. "I made two movies I've never even seen," she told an interviewer in 1991.
She attributed her drive to do charity work to her grandparents and parents who "were always volunteers in every direction."
She said she learned first-hand the power of empathy in 1943 when she performed in a ward of mental patients and got a big smile from one man she learned later had been uncommunicative for six months.
"I suddenly realized with a great sense of impact how valuable we are to each other," she said.
In 1979, she was knighted by King Olav of Norway.
In her early 70s, an interviewer asked if she had ever thought of retiring. "No. What for?" she replied. "If people retired, we wouldn't have had Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud ... I think it's very important to hang on as long as we can."
In the 1990s, Holm and Gerald McRainey starred in the CBS's "Promised Land," a spinoff of "Touched by an Angel." In 1995, she joined such stars as Tony Randall and Jerry Stiller to lobby for state funding for the arts in Albany, N.Y. Her last big screen role was as Brendan Fraser's grandmother in the romance "Still Breathing."
Holm was married five times and is survived by two sons and three grandchildren. Her marriage in 1938 to director Ralph Nelson lasted a year but produced a son, Theodor Holm Nelson. In 1940, she married Francis Davies, an English auditor. In 1946, she married airline public relations executive A. Schuyler Dunning and they had a son, Daniel Dunning.
During her fourth marriage, to actor Robert Wesley Addy, whom she married in 1966, the two appeared together on stage when they could. In the mid-1960s, when neither had a project going, they put together a two-person show called "Interplay — An Evening of Theater-in-Concert" that toured the United States and was sent abroad by the State Department. Addy died in 1996.
Funeral arrangements for Holm were incomplete. The family is asking that any memorial donations be made to UNICEF, Arts Horizons or The Lillian Booth Actors Home of The Actors Fund in Englewood, N.J.
___
Online: http://www.celesteholm.com
Future 'Assassin's Creed' games may not leap ahead
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The next installment of "Assassin's Creed" may take a trip further back in time.
The upcoming "Assassin's Creed III" trades the stealthy historical series' previous settings of the Crusades and the Renaissance for the American Revolution, but there's no guarantee future installments will be set after Independence Day.
"I
don't think we'll necessarily always go forward, or we're dooming
ourselves to run out of history," the game's creative director, Alex Hutchinson, told fans at a Comic-Con panel Thursday.
During the presentation, developers from Ubisoft Entertainment
demonstrated some time-bending "Assassin's Creed III" gameplay set in
an early rendition of Boston. The scenes featured Native American
protagonist Connor ascending brick buildings, slipping past redcoats and
bashing Scottish brawlers.
Hutchinson
told the crowd — many of whom were dressed as hooded protagonists
Altair and Ezio — that the developers originally planned for players to
be able to scalp enemies as half-Mohawk, half-English assassin Connor,
but that feature was later removed.
"When we dug into it deeper, we found it really horrifying," Hutchinson said.
"Assassin's Creed III" is set for release Oct. 30.
___
AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang is tweeting from Comic-Con at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang .
___
Online:
http://www.assassinscreed.com
'Amazing Alex': Fun, But No Angry Birds' [REVIEW]
How to Play
In Amazing Alex,
you are given a goal each level you have to achieve: in the first
levels, its getting a ball into a basket using ramps and a force called
gravity.
, Rovio's newest physics puzzle game is great for people of all ages, but you won't find yourself quite as addicted as Angry Birds.
Rovio released its newest game franchise to the Apple App Store and Google Play on Thursday morning. It's a rebranded version of Casey's Contraptions,
which was released last year for iPad and was well-reviewed then. It's
interesting that Rovio decided to simply purchase and rebrand a game
rather than coming up with their own new game ideas, but with the
success of Angry Birds, they have cart blanche to do what they
like. So this review is partially for a game that has been out a year,
with some changes.
Amazing Alex takes place in a young boy's messy house. Each level presents a different physics
puzzle that involves cleaning up: you have to put balls in a bin,
topple some books, or pop balloons. You then use the objects available
to you to solve the puzzle, earning bonuses for each of the three stars
you collect.
The physics puzzles are a little
more clever than some games, because there isn't just one solution to
every problem. You can place several pieces -- like shelves or pipes --
on a blank canvas to experiment with the game's physics. You don't also
need every piece available to you (and they change every level) to solve
a puzzle, meaning there is room fiddle with your designs.
This is where the game could have
extra challenge, and it misses the boat. There are no time bonuses for
solving a puzzle in one go, for not using all your pieces, or solving it
an allotted time. The only achievement is collecting the three stars
each level, which you'll have to do to unlock new sections of the game.
The game's difficulty isn't too
challenging; the first few levels serve entirely as tutorial, and it
won't be hard for you to breeze through the first couple of zones. The
joy in the game lies more with its sandbox nature, and it challenges you
to create whatever Rube Goldberg can most creatively solve the level.
That might not satisfy the most achievement-hungry player, but it is far
more creative and would be a great title to help kids' problem solving
skills.
This is especially true in the
section of the game that allows you to create your own levels with the
same simple household objects. Players will be able to publish and share
their own levels with friends, giving the game an extra creative level
lost on many mobile titles.
Rovio says they will offer regular, free updates to the game, similar to their support for Angry Birds. The game is easily worth the 99 cents, but those looking for a serious challenge might not get into the game.
Chinese online marketplace starts taking preorders for iPhone 5
Taobao is a portal where electronics retailers can clear out their inventories. A recent Reuters report details how these retailers are currently using the site to find buyers willing to pony up cash for a phone that hasn't even been officially announced yet. Some sellers are asking roughly $160 worth of deposit, but there are those who actually expect customers to pay approximately $1,100 or the full price of an unlocked iPhone up front, which is hilarious considering Apple has yet to divulge the phone's pricing and details.
According to the retailers Reuters talked to, they plan to buy stacks of iPhone 5 from the United States or from Hong Kong and then bring them to mainland China. That, of course, doesn't guarantee that the iPhone 5 units to be sold on Taobao will be authentic. China, as you may know by now, has a thriving market for counterfeit goods. The Reuters report didn't mention whether the fake Apple Store disguised as a fake Android Store is also taking preorders for the next iPhone.
Yahoo Hack Leaks 453,000 Voice Passwords
Yahoo passwords were stored unencrypted and stolen via a SQL
injection attack, attackers claim. Meanwhile, Formspring resets
passwords for 28 million users after a password breach.
Yahoo Voice users: Change your Yahoo password immediately.A hacker or hacking group that bills itself as "DD3Ds Company" Thursday leaked what it said were plaintext passwords for 453,492 Yahoo accounts, as well as over 2,700 database table or column names, and 298 MySQL variables. DD3Ds said it obtained the data by executing a SQL injection attack against an unnamed Yahoo subdomain, which security experts have identified as being Yahoo Voice.
We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat," read a note included in the password dump. "There have been many security holes exploited in webservers belonging to Yahoo! Inc. that have caused far greater damage than our disclosure. Please do not take them lightly. The subdomain and vulnerable parameters have not been posted to avoid further damage."
It has been a bad week for Yahoo when it comes to security issues. Read Yahoo Defends Android App, Botnet Questions Remain.
A Yahoo spokesman said that the company is currently investigating the alleged password leak. "We are currently investigating the claims of a compromise of Yahoo! user IDs. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis and also familiarize themselves with our online safety tips at security.yahoo.com," he said. "At Yahoo we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products."
According to security researchers, the leaked came from the Yahoo Voice service. That's because, while most subdomain details were excised from the data dump, "the attacker forgot to remove the hostname 'dbb1.ac.bf1.yahoo.com' (credit to Mubix for the hostname find). Looking through a variety of sources, it appears that the compromised server was likely 'Yahoo! Voices' which was formally known as Associated Content," according to Trusted Security. But according to the Guardian, the last entries in the data dump link to IDs created in 2006, suggesting that the password list may date from that time.
Yahoo bought Associated Content in May 2010 for $100 million, then renamed the service as Yahoo Voice. Billed as a way to "make free and low cost calls from your PC," the Yahoo Voice service is now outsourced by Yahoo to JAJAH. Which Yahoo Voice users have been affected by the breach? The Dazzlepod website has collected a searchable list of affected usernames and email addresses.
The Yahoo Voices password breach follows recent password breaches involving LinkedIn, as well as eHarmony and Last.fm. All of those breaches came to light only after stolen password hashes were posted to online forums. Unlike LinkedIn, eHarmony, and Last.fm, however, according to DD3Ds, Yahoo wasn't even hashing its passwords. Instead, it said they'd been stored in unencrypted format, which would mean that Yahoo had fumbled a crucial information security best practice.
In online forums, some posters posited that the plaintext passwords may date from Yahoo's acquisition of Associated Content in 2010. "Most likely a dump of old tables before authentication was migrated to login.yahoo.com. Should've dropped these tables after the migration," said "mathrawka," who claimed to have previously been a developer involved with Yahoo's single sign-on system, in a post to Hacker News.
If--as DD3Ds Co. claimed--Yahoo was storing passwords in plaintext format, privacy experts foresee FTC sanctions. Notably, privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian said via Twitter that there's a "strong chance of FTC deception case re: Yahoo password breach via claim it maintains reasonable electronic safeguards," and referenced Yahoo's privacy policy. The first line of that policy states: "Yahoo! takes your security seriously and takes reasonable steps to protect your information."
According to Soghoian, the FTC's complaint against RockYou, from which an attacker obtained and leaked 32 million passwords, focused on RockYou's privacy policy, which promised that "RockYou! uses commercially reasonable ... safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of your personal information." But the FTC alleged that RockYou's actual security safeguards weren't reasonable, in part because the website had failed to protect "its website from ... commonly known or reasonably foreseeable attacks from third parties attempting to obtain access to customer information stored in [RockYou's] databases."
SQL injection attacks are one of the most common types of attacks used to compromise websites and databases, and a favorite of hacktivist collectives, including Anonymous. Such attacks work by "injecting" SQL commands into databases. When databases don't properly screen such inputs for signs of attack, attackers have an easy-to-use technique for obtaining sensitive information from databases. The variety of freely available automated SQL injection attack tools further simply the process.
The Yahoo Voice password breach leak comes just one day after reports that 420,000 password hashes from question-and-answer website Formspring had been posted to a hacking forum. "We learned this morning that we had a security breach where some user passwords may have been accessed," said Formspring CEO Ade Olonoh in a blog posted Wednesday. In response, the company disabled passwords for all of its 28 million users.
"We apologize for the inconvenience but prefer to play it safe and have asked all members to reset their passwords," said Olonoh. "Users will be prompted to change their passwords when they log back into Formspring." He also detailed recommendationsfor creating strong passwords.
Later Wednesday, Olonoh posted additional details about the attack. "We found that someone had broken into one of our development servers and was able to use that access to extract account information from a production database," he said. "We were able to immediately fix the hole and upgraded our hashing mechanisms from SHA-256 with random salts to Bcrypt, to fortify security. We take this matter very seriously and continue to review our internal security policies and practices to help ensure that this never happens again."
Formspring has been forthright about rapidly notifying users of a breach, detailing the problem, as well as immediately putting in place a solution. Will Yahoo follow suit?
Employees and their browsers might be the weak link in your security plan. The new, all-digital Endpoint Insecurity issue of Dark Reading shows how to strengthen them. (Free registration required.)
Rovio brings Angry Birds to Samsung’s Smart TVs
The South Korean company says it has been working with Rovio on the game ever since it first unveiled its Smart TV platform back at CES. Rovio has tweaked the game to play nice with the TVs motion controls, and will be releasing it onto Samsung’s TV app store for all to enjoy. Rovio is also working with Samsung on a series of animated shorts that will also be available on the TV via on-demand.
At this rate, Rovio will have the popular franchise on just about every screen know to man. Yesterday, the company teased the Angry Birds Trilogy, a compilation of Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, and Angry Birds Seasons that would be released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo 3DS. Rovio will revamp the game with high-definition graphics and animated backgrounds, along with new cinematics and additional content.
Is the iPad helping kill the PC?
The second-quarter decline in the U.S. ranged from 6 percent to 11 percent compared with the same time last year, according to separate reports released Wednesday by Gartner Inc. and International Data Corp. Gartner came up with the lower of the two figures in the research firms' quarterly look at shipments of desktop and laptop computers.
Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the biggest PC makers in the U.S. market, suffered the steepest drops during the three months spanning from April through June.
Consumers and businesses have been buying fewer PCs during the past two years amid the growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers such as Apple's iPad. The iPad's success has spurred Apple's rivals to copy the concept, causing some analysts to predict that tablet computer sales will surpass PC sales within the next few years.
PC makers have tried to adapt by releasing sleeker laptops known as "ultrabooks," but IDC said many of those devices remain too expensive for many households at time of high unemployment and persistent fears of another economic downturn.
The interest in ultrabooks also has been tempered by the buildup for the next version of the Windows operating system that runs most PCs. Windows maker Microsoft has redesigned the software so applications are now spread across a mosaic of tiles and engineered the system so it can run on touch-based tablets as well as PCs controlled by keyboards and mice. PCs and tablets running on Windows 8 won't go on sale until October, causing some prospective PC buyers to hold off until they can see what kind of new devices and applications the new operating system inspires.
The Windows 8 anticipation will probably hurt PC sales in the current quarter ending in September, too, according to David Daoud, IDC's research director.
Even when Windows 8 hits the market, PC makers will face a new competitive threat from their longtime partner, Microsoft. The world's largest software maker last month announced plans to sell its own tablet computer, called the Surface, to battle the iPad.
Ice Age: Continental Drift: Franchise is Officially Frozen
Ice Age: Continental Drift
2012
Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
20th Century Fox
Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo
Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
20th Century Fox
Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo
Ice Age: Continental Drift is the fourth film to feature the adventures of the post-dinosaur, pre-caveman pals Manny the wooly mammoth, Sid the sloth and Deigo the sabertoothed tiger, but Fox has been smart enough not to put a number in the title. Without the number, how are parents to realize how much of their, and their precious children’s, precious time has already been spent with these annoying creatures?
The good news is, we’re moving right along in terms of natural history. In this film, thanks to continental drift caused by the earth’s shifting plates, Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo) and Diego (Denis Leary) are separated from their friends and family and cast adrift into the ocean on a chunk of ice, along with Sid’s shrewish, long-lost grandmother (Wanda Sykes). Obnoxiousness runs in the sloth family. Meanwhile, Manny’s wife Ellie (Queen Latifah) and their daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer), now a hormonal teenager, are left behind on uncertain ground. (Whether it is Pangaea, or the Earth has already subdivided is unclear.) The rest of the movie involves their attempts to reunite against considerable odds, including pirates, water spouts and giant waves for Manny et al. and crumbling cliffs and traversing land masses for the ladies.
Directed by Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier (the latter of whom also co-directed Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs), this Ice Age features a bounty of new voice talent. Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones, The Station Agent) plays Captain Gutt, a chimpanzee who leads the scurvy band of pirates. Jennifer Lopez gets to follow in Angelina Jolie’s Kung Fu Panda feline footsteps, playing Captain Gutt’s first mate, a slinky sabertoothed tiger named Shira. (Ways you can tell this is a J.Lo character: accessories. Shira wears two turquoise earrings in one ear that play up her eye color.) Parks and Recreation’s Aziz Ansari, Bridesmaid’s Rebel Wilson and Glee’s Heather Morris are all in the voice cast, but thanks to the constant din of shrieking, shrill animals, I couldn’t match their voices with any of the dozens of irritating characters on either the pirate ship or back on land.
Not that it particularly matters; your kids don’t care whether that funny lady from The View (Joy Behar) is in their animated flick or who she’s playing. They might not mind the visual overload either, but the frenetic pace masks an emptiness; this Ice Age is just a collection of slapstick moments and fisticuffs, with pauses for Sid to regurgitate food into his paw and show it to everyone. The franchise is just going through the motions at this point, and even the animation feels by-the-numbers. (The Ice Age movies are not known for their great animation, but even in the third movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, there were some beautiful nature sequences, whereas there is nothing memorable here.)
The usual premise, that friends stick together, no matter their species, has been extended to include lessons for both parents and children. Before plate tectonics intervene, Manny is a helicopter parent who spends an inordinate amount of time following Peaches as she attempts to hang with the cool crowd at their gathering place, a waterfall. “That’s a gateway!” Manny frets. (Drug references, they mean so much to small children.) Peaches is in the throes of her first crush, on another wooly mammoth—”He’s not cute. He’s hot!” she says. At the very moment she shouts, “I wish you weren’t my father,” the earth begins to shake and the continents start to break apart–daddy is just gone. Talk about your wish fulfillment. While Peaches learns to regret her harsh words, Manny comes to realize he needs to trust his capable child more, just as Marlin did in Finding Nemo, even if Ice Age lacks the wit and loveliness of spirit that made Nemo so special.
So mammoths, they’re just like us, and not just while at loggerheads with offspring. Sid the sloth has to deal with the responsibility of aging grandparents (Grandma has dementia). And Diego, the crotchety saber-toothed tiger (Leary’s voice work is the best in the film) finally finds love with sleek Shira. Everybody makes personal progress in this movie. All this anthropomorphizing is commonplace in movies for kids, obviously, but in Ice Age it’s particularly grating because it reflects not so much real human behavior as human behavior as put forth by our pop culture. The pirate business is pulled straight from Pirates of the Caribbean and the teen tantrums feel ripped from a Nickelodeons sitcom. “Stress is so stressful,” one of the teen mammoths says. That profundity is so profound.
Needless to say, I am looking forward to Ice Age: Dawn of Meat-Eating Man. Also needless to say, kids are likely to judge this Ice Age far less harshly. And they will ask you what continental drift means, so there is at least that modicum of learning involv
Angry Birds trilogy coming to a console near you
As it continues the transition from mobile devices, Angry Birds fans
will now be able to purchase the popular games for their console too.
Activision and Rovio have confirmed an Angry Birds trilogy for consoles is under development.The trilogy will contain the original Angry Birds game, Seasons, and Rio, but will not include the recently released Angry Birds in Space.
Designed for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo 3DS, the games will be packaged on one disc or on a cartridge for the 3DS. According to IGN's online store and media reports, the trilogy is pegged for release in December this year.
Rovio's executive vice president of games Petri Jarvilehto told IGN that the games have been developed "from the ground up" with HDTVs in mind. According to Jarvilehto, it will contain cinematic extras, as yet undisclosed additional features unique to the console versions of the game, and the graphics will be high resolution and tailored to large screens.
Jarvilehto confirmed that individual leaderboards will make an appearance on each level.
"The backgrounds have been animated, we've added lighting modes, reactive backgrounds, the list goes on and on," Jarvilehto said. "We believe that there are a lot of people on the consoles who appreciate a great casual game play experience. This is a game that resonates across a wide audience on many platforms."
In addition, the Xbox 360 version will offer Kinect support, the PlayStation 3 version will get PS Move support and StreetPass will be facilitated on the 3DS.
Angry Birds flew to fame after being released for iOS and Android devices. It is now also available as a browser-based game and in a version tailored for Facebook.
Is Sofia Vergara Engaged?
Looks like they're back on – in a big way.
Nearly two months after news broke that Sofia Vergara and Nick Loeb were splitting up, he gave the Modern Family star a shiny new ring for her 40th birthday. One source tells PEOPLE the couple are engaged, but other sources say the actress does not consider herself engaged.
An unnamed Mexico-based rep for the star tells Peopleenespanol.com, "As of today, Sofia is not engaged."
Loeb accompanied the actress to Mexico, where she celebrated her birthday with a weekend of festivities. On Monday, a Vergara pal posted a photo on Twitter of the actress wearing a sparkler on her ring finger in Mexico. Tuesday, Wonderwall reported the couple are engaged.
The actress and Loeb rekindled their relationship at the beginning of June, though a source told PEOPLE, "There are compromises to work out on both sides."
Loeb, a businessman with political aspirations, first made major headlines with the actress when she was by his hospital bedside in September 2010, following a serious car accident.
Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, other Viacom channels come off DirecTV
Unable to reach a deal with Viacom, parent of several popular cable channels, including MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and VH1, DirecTV is no longer carrying the media giant's networks. DirecTV has almost 20 million subscribers around the nation.
Both sides blamed each other for the channels coming off of the satellite broadcaster on Tuesday evening. Viacom said DirecTV dropped the channels without warning. DirecTV countered that its hand was forced by Viacom.
"DirecTV executives reached out to Viacom both yesterday and today with a new proposal and a request to keep the channels on while we continued to negotiate, but never heard back, so DirecTV had to comply with their demand to take the channels down or face legal action," the company said in a statement.
Derek Chang, DirecTV's executive vice president of content, said Viacom is "pushing DirecTV customers to pay more than a 30% increase, which equates to an extra $1 billion" for its channels. Chang went on to say that those increases are being sought "despite the fact that the ratings for many of their main networks have plummeted and much of Viacom’s programming can be seen for free online.”
Viacom said it had "proposed a fair deal that amounted to an increase of only a couple pennies per day, per subscriber" and that it hopes that "DirecTV will work with us toward a resolution, and stop denying its subscribers access to the networks they watch most."
Feuds between programmers and distributors over rates are not uncommon but it is rare when channels are actually taken off the service. DirecTV risks losing subscribers and Viacom could see its ratings take a hit from the loss of distribution.a
'Twilight' fan dies at Comic-Con in traffic accident
SAN DIEGO – A Comic-Con fan was fatally injured Tuesday when she was hit by a car on her way to wait in line for a "Twilight" panel at the San Diego Convention Center.
The 53-year-old woman ran into the middle of Harbor Drive and tried to stop in her tracks but it was too late," said San Diego Police Lt. Andra Brown. The 67-year-old driver who hit her cooperated with investigators and will not be cited, Brown said.
More than 100,000 pop-culture aficionados are expected to flood the San Diego Convention Center from Thursday to Sunday. Many fans have already arrived.
Fans told U-T San Diego the woman had been in line since Sunday for a Thursday panel on "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2," the last film in the hugely popular "Twilight" series, set for release Nov. 16.
Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment, the film's distributors, released the following statement late Tuesday: "Lionsgate, Summit and the entire `Twilight' community are saddened by the death of a Comic-Con fan today due to a traffic accident during the hours leading up to this year's convention in San Diego. Our thoughts and condolences go out to the victim's family and friends. She will be respectfully remembered this Thursday in Hall H."
The 53-year-old woman ran into the middle of Harbor Drive and tried to stop in her tracks but it was too late," said San Diego Police Lt. Andra Brown. The 67-year-old driver who hit her cooperated with investigators and will not be cited, Brown said.
More than 100,000 pop-culture aficionados are expected to flood the San Diego Convention Center from Thursday to Sunday. Many fans have already arrived.
Fans told U-T San Diego the woman had been in line since Sunday for a Thursday panel on "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2," the last film in the hugely popular "Twilight" series, set for release Nov. 16.
Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment, the film's distributors, released the following statement late Tuesday: "Lionsgate, Summit and the entire `Twilight' community are saddened by the death of a Comic-Con fan today due to a traffic accident during the hours leading up to this year's convention in San Diego. Our thoughts and condolences go out to the victim's family and friends. She will be respectfully remembered this Thursday in Hall H."
Critic's Notebook: Frank Ocean's album is bigger than 'he'
Frank Ocean's 'Channel Orange' is getting attention for his singing about lusting for a 'he,' but that may be distracting from its overall beauty.
With his decision to address lust for another man on his new album,
"Channel Orange," 24-year-old Frank Ocean has become something other
than one of the most dynamic R&B singers and songwriters of the last
half-decade: He's become, for the moment, one of the first to challenge
a genre known for its acidic intolerance of homosexuality.The album was highly anticipated, coming on the heels of Ocean's critically acclaimed collection from last year, "Nostalgia, Ultra," and the sexual content — which surfaces on two songs — has so far received fairly gentle treatment. Ocean, born Christopher Breaux, debuted a song on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon"on Monday only hours before releasing the album on iTunes, and got a warm reception. Several stars have also offered support on Twitter and in the media, including Beyoncé and Russell Simmons.
On the new album, the young MC says "he" rather than "she" on the songs "Bad Religion" and "Forrest Gump," and a few days after early reviewers began wondering about the lyrics, he published a note on his website spelling it out: Specifically, he fell in love with a man, and then decided to sing about it on this new album.
But the sexual themes, ultimately, are little more than a red herring — some would even say a publicity stunt, timed to draw attention to the album's release — when it comes to the overall beauty of "Channel Orange."
A concept album filled with as many stories and observations about modern-day Southern California life as theBeach Boys'"Surfin' Safari" did in 1962, the album offers a vivid snapshot of the twentysomething experience in Los Angeles. Ocean is a young artist with an ear for thoughtful, brave, witty, imaginative storytelling, a strong voice and keen sense of the world in which he's found himself. His is a city he describes in "Sweet Life" as "domesticated paradise, palm trees and pools, whatever feels good," a new home that has changed him in ways that he outlines throughout the album.
Ocean moved to L.A. in 2005 and joined the L.A. hip-hop collective Odd Future in 2009, and also signed to Def Jam Records as a solo artist that year to record "Nostalgia, Ultra." In early 2011, when the record sat on the label's shelf for too long, a frustrated Ocean, who had made inroads as a songwriter and worked with Justin Bieber and John Legend, released "Nostalgia, Ultra" as a free download on his Tumblr site. It drew raves and he had a hit song with "Novacane," a witty track about a hook-up after Coachella involving a dental assistant, and the release landed on many critics' best of 2011 lists (including mine). He sang memorable hooks on Jay-Z and Kanye West's album, "Watch the Throne," where his tenor played the perfect foil in the chorus to "No Church in the Wild." At one point Def Jam was going to finally release "Nostalgia, Ultra," but decided against it.
Smart move. Ocean went back into the studio, and the result is a quiet, if tempestuous, storm, filled with muffled beats, whispers, perfectly placed arrangements, enough space within songs that each note is clear and present, and an overarching theme that confirms that its creator has an artistic vision that reaches beyond the gender of his desire.
On the essential "Crack Rock," about an addict, you can hear the echo of Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On." Its quieter, more intimate moments suggest Sly and the Family Stone's version of "Que Sera Sera" and Prince's "Sign o' the Times," and Ocean's debt to Drake's brand of emo-R&B is obvious on a number of tracks. Combined, you can hear a whole history. And even if Ocean's writing could use fewer syllables and more allegiance to meter and rhyme — he crams a lot of information into his lines — with experience will come restraint.
Ocean's album sets itself as a kind of recorded program, with hissing between-song interludes that seem to capture specific moments in Ocean's life: a conversation with a woman driving; footsteps in a rainstorm; and pocket-shuffled snippets. These combine to create a swirl of mystery, one that Ocean describes in the first words on the album, in "Thinking About You," in an apology to an unnamed other. "A tornado flew around my room before you came," he confesses as he hints at tears shed. "Excuse the mess it made, it usually doesn't rain in Southern California."
Ocean takes us on a journey that tempers those tears, from a young man experiencing teenage (hetero) lust on "Sierra Leone" who seems confused by "tidbits of intuition that I been getting / Abandon mission, abandon mission," to an adult reveling in the mansions of Ladera Heights, which Ocean describes as "the black Beverly Hills."
Class tension is at the heart of "Super Rich Kids," as well. One of the album's best tracks, it describes a night drinking "too many bottles of wine we can't pronounce" as a member of the uber-wealthy where "the maids come round too much" and the parents are absent. Or, as Odd Future rapper Earl Sweatshirt describes them in an amazing 16-bar rap, "the Xany-gnashing Caddy smashing" children of fortune.
And then there's "Forrest Gump," the song about Ocean's pseudonymous male love interest. Set against a slow burn of a groove, the song is notable not for anything explicit or untoward. Rather, it's a simple song about desire. Well — not simple. Very complicated, in fact. How to reveal his feelings? "I know you wouldn't hurt a beetle / But you're so buff and so strong. I'm nervous, Forrest. Forrest Gump."
Thankfully, the hard part is over and we can look past a few pronouns and instead see the biggest truth about "Channel Orange" — that artistic courage can beget true change, especially when the creation beneath it tells such an engaging story.
The Aerodyne Streamliner makes a rare appearance: Flickr photo of the day
There's only one Aerodyne Streamliner Coupe in the world, and while it
looks like a survivor of World War II, it's actually a modern
"resto-rod" crafted from the body of a 1956 Jaguar
XK140, with the design by a Nissan stylist. We pick a beautiful car
photo from the Flickr universe every day, like this shot from mjhbower. If you have an image to share, please add it to Motoramic's Flickr group -- a sampling of which now appears on every story we post -- or send us a message via Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.World’s most expensive car crash crumples rare Ferrari worth $30 million
Owned by American investor Christopher Cox and his wife Ann, this 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO had been raced around the world by a Swedish driver in the early '60s -- hence the blue-and-yellow color scheme rather than the traditional Ferrari red. Last week, during a gathering in central France to mark the 50th anniversary of the 250 GTO, another car collided with the Coxes. Ann Cox suffered a broken leg and other injuries, while Christopher Cox had only minor scrapes; both were treated and released from a French hospital.According to people who've seen photos from the crash, the entire front end of the 250 GTO and its 300-hp V-12 was wrecked. It's not the first time this particular GTO has been crashed (it was damaged in 1976 and then restored) but it's a reminder that despite its value, the 250 GTO's tubular steel frame and aluminum body crumple easily compared to the rigid frames of modern vehicles. A similar Ferrari 250 GTO built for racer Stirling Moss sold in May for $35 million in a private auction, making it the most expensive vehicle ever to change hands.
Other Ferraris have gone through worse and emerged after much tinkering to retain their classic status. Ferrari owns a restoration arm, Ferrari Classiche, that not only rebuilds and services old Ferraris but provides a blessing for authenticity, even to cars with all-new bodies and rebuilt engines. It may disappear for a few years, but when it comes to cars as rare and sought-after as the Ferrari 250 GTO, there's no such thing as totaled.
New Verizon Samsung Galaxy S3 has unlocking bootloader
Now here's an interesting twist to the story of the Samsung Galaxy S III (S3) on Verizon. Samsung has just announced that it'll sell a version of its flagship Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone for Verizon that features an unlockable bootloader.
This means that the Galaxy S III Developer Edition, as its called, will open the door for developers and enthusiasts to tinker around on their phones, as in to install custom ROMs. Verizon's version of the Galaxy S3 is the only one whose bootloader isn't unlockable by default; phone owners can unlock the GS3 on Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T, for instance, if they choose.
The liberty to customize the phone comes at a price: $600 when it's ready for purchasing, and only when purchased directly from Samsung's site. This is the same price as a 16GB off-contract GS3 from Verizon's own site.
The announcement comes at a curious time, two days before Verizon's (delayed) GS3 sale date, but well after the first wave of enthusiasts were able to place their preorders online.
Samsung shared a nice Q&A over e-mail that sums up additional details; here it is, reproduced, below.
Who is this for?
Samsung and Verizon Wireless recognize that there are many enthusiasts and professional developers that are interested in customizing their device with third-party ROM software. Unlocking the bootloader can put the stability of the phone in jeopardy; therefore, only experienced developers should attempt to unlock the bootloader.
What about the other carriers?
Other versions of the Galaxy S III are sold with a user-unlockable bootloader as a standard feature. Those models are available directly from the respective carriers.
Where can I buy the Galaxy S III Developer Edition?
The Developer Edition will be sold online directly from Samsung. When the device is available for purchase, it will be sold through the Samsung developer portal at developer.samsung.com for $599.
Why is Verizon Wireless' version locked?
Depending on the device, an open bootloader could prevent Verizon Wireless from providing the same level of customer experience and support because it would allow users to change the phone or otherwise modify the software and, potentially, negatively impact how the phone connects with the network. The addition of unapproved software could also negatively impact the wireless experience for other customers. Unlocking the device also voids the warranty.
Has Samsung always unlocked the bootloader on its phones?
While not all previous Samsung Android devices have had an easily unlockable bootloader, all of our other current Galaxy S III flagship lineup, and all Nexus-branded devices, support the standard bootloader unlocking procedure.
What happens if I load custom software and damage ('brick') my phone?
Problems caused by unlocking the bootloader and installing custom software will not be covered by the warranty. Problems with third-party and customized bootloader software can cause irreparable harm to the Galaxy S III. Users interested in performing these actions should proceed with caution and at their own risk. Out of warranty Galaxy S III Developer Edition devices will be serviced directly through Samsung, and service charges will apply.
iPad Mini and iPhone 5 pre-production models appear in China
Both the fabled iPad Mini and the iPhone 5 from Apple appear to have been leaked today from a manufacturing plant in China, with prefab models being leaked in blurry photo form. While it’s not out of the question that both of these mobile models could indeed be in model stages (or that their molds would still be out there somewhere if they’re near production), we encourage you to go heavy on the grains of salt with this particular situation. On the other hand, both models appear, courtesy of GottaBeMobile to replicate closely what we’ve seen before in image leaks for both the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini.What we’re seeing here, or what we’re being shown here by a relatively skilled creator of 3D-modeled products. The iPad Mini, up first, shows two speaker grilles across the bottom of the device with a single tiny dock connector that we must assume is the much-hyped but not yet confirmed 19-pin dock connector that Apple may or may not be introducing with the iPad Mini and the iPhone 5 this Autumn. The iPad Mini will essentially have around a 7.85-inch display, will be about 2/3 the size of the current iPad, and will be just about 4/5 as thick.
The iPhone 5, on the other hand, does not appear to be made of the same 3D-modeling plastic that the iPad Mini does. Instead we’ve got one solid hunk of what must be aluminum. The only reason we can think of that this device model would be made of one big hunk of metal would be that it’s set up for some sort of process which involves great amounts of heat – don’t want it to melt!
You’ll want to hit up our [iPhone 5 portal] to see everything we’ve seen on what could potentially be happening with this next-generation smartphone. For iPad Mini news, head to the timeline below and have yourself a feast!
Kim Plays Coy About Kanye's Rap On 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians'
Kim Kardashian plays it cool when asked if she's heard Kanye rapping about her on the April single 'Cold.'
Kanye West is pretty proud of himself for dedicating a line to Kim Kardashian on the single "Cold," pointing to her in the audience while he rapped it during his Friday night show in Atlantic City, and the latest episode of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" confirms that his famous girlfriend is pretty smug about it as well.
When 'Ye released "Cold" (previously titled "Theraflu" and "Way Too Cold") back in April, his reference to the reality TV star triggered a firestorm on the Web. "And I'll admit I fell in love with Kim/ Around the same time she had fell in love with him," he rapped, alluding to Kim's failed marriage to Kris Humphries.
The song premiered right around the time that photos of the pair began to surface, showing them holding hands and strolling to dinner dates together, but Kardashian tried to play coy about the situation, dodging questions about the song. Those days are long gone, though. Kanye West will appear on Monday night's (July 9) episode of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," and fans will finally get to see Kim's reaction to the song.
In a preview clip for the episode, Kim and Kourtney receive a call from their brother Rob, who can't wait to ask Kim about the track, especially since it came right after she was flour-bombed. Kim, in a poor attempt to play innocent, acts like it's no big deal, responding, "Yeah I've heard it so, what?" with a smirk on her face, before adding. "Just because I'm seen with someone, does it automatically mean that he's my boyfriend?" Apparently the answer is yes.
The clip continues as Kourtney shares her limited two cents on the relationship, telling viewers, "Kim and Kanye have been friends for years, and they've been hanging out lately. And I have no idea if it's serious or not." Safe to say it's pretty serious at this point. The couple has been spotted all across North America and Europe over the past few weeks on their PDA tour, with Kim even joining Kanye in the front row next to Jay-Z and Beyonc— at the BET Awards.
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