New game console from Microsoft is coming after eight years, and it will face powerful competition from Sony’s Playstation 4 and Nintendo’s Wii U.

This market is quickly changing, and more and more players are turning to online play. Microsoft wants it’s console to be entertainment center for whole family. Sales of all consoles have been falling past few years, while the gaming on tablets, smartphones and online social networks is gaining more players. Also the consoles were getting older, and not getting proper replacement.

But consoles are still holding a huge part of the gaming market – around 42 percent of it. International Data Corp calculated that there were about 250 million of Xbox, PS3 and Wii devices sold in 2005-2012 period.

In November Nintendo launched Wii U, and by March they sold 3.45 million devices, which is much lower than initial 5.5 million intention. And predictions for Sony’s Playstation 4 are not so great.

“The next wave crest isn’t as high as the previous one,” said Lewis Ward, research manager at International Data Corp, ”I do think that consoles as a product category have peaked and the next gen devices won’t match those totals.”

“A more detailed analysis will be needed but the missiles launched may be a modified anti-ship missile or the KN-02 surface-to-surface missile derived from the Soviet-era SS-21 that has a range of about 120 kilometers,” Yonhap cited a Seoul official.

Monitoring of North Korea is increased, and Seoul is prepared to deal with possible situation development.

It is believed that the missiles have fallen in the Japanese Sea, after the launch from eastern coast of North Korea. Japan didn’t say anything about missiles landing in their territorial waters, but they confirmed the missiles being launched.

These missile launches were probably part of military drills, according to analysts. These kind of missiles are routinely test-launched by Pyongyang, but these tests took place after few calm weeks. Earlier this year there were tensions on Korean Peninsula, after North Korea tested Taepodong 2 long-range missile in December, and conducted a nuclear test in February. UN’s reaction to this were strict sanctions.

When South Korea and the United States started their joint military drills in March, North Korea threatened they will start a nuclear attack on the U.S. They tested two missiles off their eastern coast and forbidden South Korean workers entry to Kaesong industrial complex.

There were reports last week of two North Korean mid-range missiles being withdrawn from their positions.

Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy S 4 with an elaborate staging. About 3,000 journalists and bloggers from around the world on Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan witnesses, as the South Korean World Group introduced its latest high-end smartphone with a lot of show included musical contributions. Simultaneously were New Yorkers and tourists on the giant screens to the near Times Square to see.

The new smartphone has a screen with full HD resolution, which was increased from 4.8 to five inches. The camera sets of eight to 13 megapixels. In addition, the S4 has a more powerful chip. A special feature is the dual camera feature that allows shooting in two directions at the same time can be made. It has a translation function, and a new technique, which enables a control with the eyes. Stop with the new feature called Smart Pause now also videos when the gaze is averted, so you will not miss anything. And rest as long as the eyes on the screen, the user can scroll through web pages by the phone slightly tilted forward or backward.

There is no other smartphone except the iPhone’s interest in the run was so great. Because Samsung has become with more than 100 million units sold so far for the Galaxy brand strongest competitor of Apple. Alone from the previous top model Galaxy S 3, which is for one year on the market, the South Koreans have sold 43 million units by the end of March, there will be 60 million, according to analysts. Particularly the large display and the powerful processor were and are the main selling point for many customers. The Galaxy S series is now one of the main product lines of a company that is depending on the benevolence as grocery stores or mega group. Samsung is a leader in televisions and flat screens, manufactures household appliances, sells insurance and operates even an amusement park.

The Galaxy S3 has in any case ensured that Samsung has come to the forefront of the smartphone market. The Koreans had in 2012 an impressive market share of 30 percent. The company, which has long been decried as imitators, has managed to become the only true rival Apple, even if there has been, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics, the iPhone 5 sold in the last quarter, almost twice as good as the Galaxy S3. However, the newest iPhone was not until this holiday season on the market. Its successor the Galaxy S4 will now turn the tables. And the Koreans could succeed.

With the new control by eye contact, the dual camera function and the translation software Samsung brings innovative – if not yet fully mature – features on the market. So they may well replace Apple, which was long in driving innovation. Indeed, since the not very popular voice control Siri Californians have long outgrown surprised with a groundbreaking innovation.

SimCity’s launch may be long remembered as a complete disaster, but in a new update, Lucy Bradshaw, General Manager of Sims creator and EA subsidiary Maxis, aimed to alleviate the sour mood by promising to fix the connectivity calamity and deliver a free game as a peace offering.

“To get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio,” said Bradshaw. “On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an e-mail telling them how to redeem their free game.”

There’s no further information about what type of games SimCity players can choose from (I hope they’re AAA quality), but it seems likely that people could choose from a predetermined selection of titles on Electronic Arts’ Origin digital game store. Bradshaw said in the note that the employees of Maxis feel bad about what happened, and she acknowledges that the free-game offer may come off as “a little contrived — kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy.” But, she says, “We’re hoping you won’t stay mad and that we’ll be friends again when SimCity is running at 100 percent.”

The offer may calm down stressed out gamers who purchased SimCity and couldn’t get a refund on Origin, as the storefront doesn’t allow returns of digital game downloads.

Bradshaw goes on to explain that the situation facing SimCity since its launch has “improved significantly” as the company continues to enhance network infrastructure and add servers.

“So what went wrong? The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected,” said Bradshaw. “More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta. OK, we agree, that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it. In the last 48 hours we increased server capacity by 120 percent. It’s working — the number of people who have gotten in and built cities has improved dramatically. The number of disrupted experiences has dropped by roughly 80 percent.”

Ever since its launch on March 5, many gamers trying to play SimCity experienced disconnections, lengthy queues, and other server-related woes. The primary issue revolves around EA’s requirement for an always-on Internet connection to play (even in single player mode), and the total error of EA not preparing enough servers to support heavy traffic after the highly anticipated game launched around the world.

Source: CNET

he No. 3 ratings agency cut Italy’s credit rating to BBB+, which is still investment grade. The outlook for Italy is negative, suggesting that further downgrades are possible.

Italy has been without clear leadership for weeks as politicians struggle to form a coalition following last month’s inconclusive election.

Fitch said it is unlikely that a stable government will be formed in the next few weeks.

“The increased political uncertainty and non-conducive backdrop for further structural reform measures constitute a further adverse shock to the real economy amidst the deep recession,” the agency said.

The latest economic data underscored that the recession in Italy is “one of the deepest in Europe,” according to Fitch.

Fitch expects the Italian economy to shrink 1.8% this year, following a 2.4% decline in 2012.

The ongoing recession could put additional pressure on the government’s finances. Fitch expects government debt in Italy to reach 130% of gross domestic product this year.

Italy’s borrowing costs shot up near 5% last month after voters backed anti-establishment politicians and allies of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

But yields on Italy’s 10-year bonds have retreated to about 4.6% since then as investors appear willing to let the political process play out.

Source: CNN

Apple’s patent application describes a system that would include embedded user information as part of the DRM of each file. When the file is given or resold to another user, the ownership of the data would change and the original purchaser would no longer be able to access the file—only the new owner would be able to open it. Ideally, this would address concerns about simply making copies of files that both the original and new owner can access.

But this isn’t just about figuring out who can access the files and when they can do it—Apple also included provisions for when money is exchanged for the “used” file. “As part of the change in access rights, the transferee may pay to obtain access to the digital content item. A portion of the proceeds of the ‘resale’ may be paid to the creator or publisher of the digital content item and/or the entity that originally sold the digital content item to the original owner,” reads the application.

But while this sounds like a boon to digital customers and libraries, the legality of reselling digital files remains up for debate. As an example, Capitol Records accused a company describing itself as “your favorite pre-owned record store, but for digital music files” of facilitating rampant music copying in early 2012. The company, ReDigi, fought back against a copyright infringement suit by saying that no “copying” was taking place between users, and it only facilitated the sale of files between buyers and sellers.

On the flip-side, a European court ruled last June that customers do have the right to resell purchased software regardless of whether it came on physical media or via the Internet.

The reason some publishers are worried is that they think the resale of digital files—whether music, or e-books, or anything in between—will devalue their original purchase price and eventually ruin the market. “The resale of e-books would send the price of new books crashing,” Authors Guild President Scott Turow told the New York Times. “Who would want to be the sucker who buys the book at full price when a week later everyone else can buy it for a penny?”

Indeed, a second-hand market for digital files could complicate things between publishers and the stores that sell their content—they would likely have to negotiate very favorable resale licensing deals before publishers get on board. And Apple’s not the only one looking at how to do this: Amazon has filed its own patent application for the resale of digital content, which was published earlier this year. With digital powerhouses like Apple and Amazon seemingly on the same wavelength, content owners may be feeling the pressure to comply, even if they think their work is being devalued.

There’s another angle to these patents as well. If Apple and Amazon were to create markets for used digital goods, it would put them in conflict with the software industry. The software industry has fought hard for the right to stop resales it doesn’t like—and it has generally won the argument that digital goods are “licensed” and can’t be resold. The key case here was Vernor v. Autodesk, which was won by the software industry.

Of course, patent applications are just that: applications. And even if the USPTO were to grant them full patent status, there’s no guarantee that either Apple or Amazon will end up making their ideas into a reality. Both companies own deep patent portfolios for ideas that will never see the light of day, so publishers don’t have to start shaking in their boots just yet. That said, it’s clear these companies are at least thinking about how to make their digital content offerings more appealing to users, so it seems unlikely that this will be the last we’ll hear about such ideas.

Source: ArsTechnica

The skeletons date between 8,000 and 4,200 years ago, meaning the burial place was used for millennia.

“It must have been a place of memory,” said study co-author Mary Anne Tafuri, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge. “People throughout time have kept it, and they have buried their people, over and over”.

About 15 women and children were buried in the rock shelter, while five men and juveniles were buried under giant stone heaps called tumuli outside the shelter during a later period, when the region turned to desert.

The findings, which are detailed in the March issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, suggest the culture changed with the climate.

Millennia of burials

From about 8,000 to 6,000 years ago, the Sahara desert region, called Wadi Takarkori, was filled with scrubby vegetation and seasonal green patches. Stunning rock art depicts ancient herding animals, such as cows, which require much more water to graze than the current environment could support, Tafuri said.

Tafuri and her colleague Savino di Lernia began excavating the archaeological site between 2003 and 2006. At the same site, archaeologists also uncovered huts, animal bones and pots with traces of the earliest fermented dairy products in Africa.

To date the skeletons, Tafuri measured the remains for concentrations of isotopes, or molecules of the same element with different weights.

The team concluded that the skeletons were buried over four millennia, with most of the remains in the rock shelter buried between 7,300 and 5,600 years ago.

The males and juveniles under the stone heaps were buried starting 4,500 years ago, when the region became more arid. Rock art confirms the dry up, as the cave paintings began to depict goats, which need much less water to graze than cows, Tafuri said.

The ancient people also grew up not far from the area where they were buried, based on a comparison of isotopes in tooth enamel, which forms early in childhood, with elements in the nearby environment.

Shift in culture?

The findings suggest the burial place was used for millennia by the same group of people. It also revealed a divided society.

“The exclusive use of the rock shelter for female and sub-adult burials points to a persistent division based on gender,” wrote Marina Gallinaro, a researcher in African studies at Sapienza University of Rome, who was not involved in the study, in an email to LiveScience.

One possibility is that during the earlier period, women had a more critical role in the society, and families may have even traced their descent through the female line. But once the Sahara began its inexorable expansion into the region about 5,000 years ago, the culture shifted and men’s prominence may have risen as a result, Gallinaro wrote.

The region as a whole is full of hundreds of sites yet to be excavated, said Luigi Boitani, a biologist at Sapienza University of Rome, who has worked on archaeological sites in the region but was not involved in the study.

“The area is an untapped treasure,” Boitani said.

The new discovery also highlights the need to protect the fragile region, which has been closed to archaeologists since the revolution that ousted dictator Moammar el Gadhafi.

Takarkori is very close to the main road that leads from Libya into neighboring Niger, so rebels and other notorious political figures, such as Gadhafi’s sons, have frequently passed through the area to escape the country, he said.

Source: LiveScience

The storm buried parts of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions with snow but barely laid a glove on Washington, D.C.

As the storm moved up the coast to New England, strong winds, heavy snow and power outages were expected.

In Mantoloking, N.J., the Jersey shore town hardest-hit by Sandy, pounding surf broke through a temporary dune during the early-morning high tide. The dune breach forced the closing of a major coastal highway for several hours, but the highway re-opened late Thursday morning.

Detective Stacy Ferris said the breach spanned three oceanfront properties, sending 3 to 6 inches of water flowing through onto the highway. As a result, officials closed portion of Route 35.

The state Department of Transportation, along with Mantoloking’s own public works crews and contractors, were busy scooping and pushing sand back into the breach to prepare for high tide, expected at about 3 p.m. Thursday.

“We’re going to plug that hole before the next high tide,” Ferris said.

Every one of the 521 homes in Mantoloking was damaged to some degree by Sandy. Many were completely destroyed and hundreds of others suffered major damage.

New Englanders were bracing for the brunt of the storm Thursday evening and Friday morning.

The National Weather Service was predicting up to 7 inches of heavy, wet snow in southeastern Connecticut and wind gusts that could hit 50 mph. A coastal flood warning was in effect starting Thursday morning for east-facing shores in Massachusetts, with up to a 3-foot surge at high tide in some areas. Central Massachusetts was bracing for 4 to 8 inches of snow, while early predictions were that Boston would get less.

Dozens of car crashes were reported across Connecticut Thursday morning. A FedEx tractor trailer overturned on Interstate 84 in Tolland, causing a chain-reaction crash involving about nine other vehicles, including a state police cruiser and two other tractor-trailers.

The eastbound side of the highway was closed for hours Thursday morning, but no serious injuries were reported.

In the seacoast town of Scituate, Mass., about 30 miles south of Boston, emergency officials were setting up a shelter at the high school and preparing for three high tides during the duration of the storm, including one at about 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

“They are recommending that folks who live right on the coast to evacuate at least three hours before high tide,” said Mark Patterson, the town’s harbormaster.

“A lot of the concern has to do at this point with the wind direction and duration of the storm,” Patterson said.

“If the wind stays in the northeast for all three (high tides), that will drive the storm surge onto shore and that’s when we see coastal flooding and beach erosion.”

Some other in Massachusetts were carefree about the storm.

Mail carrier Stephen Manning didn’t even wear a coat as he delivered mail along Dorchester Avenue in Boston. Instead, he wore a hooded sweatshirt.

“This is warm,” Manning said. “You wear a jacket when it’s cold.”

The storm pummeled the nation’s midsection Tuesday, killing at least five people in weather-related traffic accidents. More than 1,100 flights were cancelled Tuesday at Chicago’s two airports, and hundreds more were cancelled Wednesday in Washington, Philadelphia and New York.

In Washington, where as much as 10 inches had been forecast, the storm did little but drop harmless snowflakes that rapidly melted amid warmer-than-expected temperatures.

There were bigger problems elsewhere in the region, though.

In southwest Virginia, a 22-year-old man was killed early Thursday after his vehicle ran off an icy Route 632, went over an embankment and landed upside down in a creek.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency and about 50 National Guard soldiers were sent out to help clear roads. Up to 20 inches of snow piled up in central and western parts of the state. More than 200,000 customers in Virginia lost power.

In Maryland, the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday resumed searching for a distressed fishing boat that was lost in rough seas with two men on board. The Coast Guard said the 67-foot boat became disabled 15 miles east of Assateague Island Wednesday. The Coast Guard found a third man on a life raft and was able to rescue him.

The storm dumped 2 feet of snow in parts of neighboring West Virginia, closing schools in more than half the state and leaving more than 20,000 customers without power.

In Pennsylvania and Ohio, many areas had 4 to 6 inches of snow.

Source: Yahoo News

50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time: Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg, ‘Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang’

“They’ve incorporated the journey of my own personal reincarnation as Snoop Lion into my character – the environments and the path that players have to follow,” said Snoop in a statement reported by The Guardian. “It’s not just about who you are or where you’ve been but where you are headed to.”

U.K. game studios Echo Peak and 505 Games are leading the project, and are targeting an April 23rd release on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, iOS and Android. “The idea of creating an original game concept around [Snoop's] music and love of Seventies kung-fu and blaxploitation movies was a mouthwatering prospect,” said Echo Peak’s Ciaran Walsh.

Snoop’s first album as Snoop Lion, Reincarnated, will be out April 23rd. He has previously appeared in a few video games, including the fighting game Tekken Tag Tournament 2 last year. Snoop’s documentary Reincarnated, which also tracks his journey into reggae music, will be out March 15th. He’ll be playing the Ultra Music Festival in March.

In the dispute over a dominant market position in web browsers, Microsoft had engaged 2009, to provide customers in Europe until 2014 when you start the operating system access to a selection screen with multiple browsers. This is to ensure that users make use of alternatives to the pre-installed Internet Explorer on Windows systems. But with the update “Service Pack 1″ for the Windows 7 operating system, the Group made the function a surprisingly.

The group had a failure given in the past year and a “technical error” spoken.He blamed technicians who had forgotten a necessary update. Meanwhile, Microsoft has ended the practice criticized. To make amends, the company had already announced that it will offer the automatic browser selection 15 months longer than the prescribed from Brussels five years.

EU sees dominance of Microsoft as a problem

Browser programs are necessary to navigate the World Wide Web, it can be accessed websites on the computer. Microsoft previously installed by default own Internet Explorer. Following the intervention of the European Commission opens now on all new Windows devices in the European Union a selection box on the competition also offers such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and eight smaller vendors like Opera appear.But could the European Commission to support the still apparently not: “This is the first time that the Commission is a company for failure to comply with a commitment decision to impose a fine must”, the Commission now. Brussels is generally the supremacy of Microsoft as a problem – the market share of the Windows operating system in Europe is in computers and laptops at more than 90 percent. The proportion of Internet Explorer in the browser, however, according to the EU Commission by 55 percent significantly lower.