http://www.pcworld.com en-us Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:51:11 -0700 Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:51:11 -0700 Wed, 12 Mar 2014 23:05:10 -0700 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has temporarily reversed its earlier order that call records collected by the National Security Agency should be destroyed after the current five-year limit. The court modified its stand after a District Court in California on Monday ordered the government to retain phone records it collects in bulk from telecommunications carriers, as the metadata could be required as evidence in two civil lawsuits that challenge the NSA's phone records program under section 215 of the Patriot Act. The conflicting directives from federal courts puts the government in "an untenable position" and are likely to create confusion and uncertainty among all concerned about the status of the data collected over five years ago, Reggie B. Walton, presiding judge of the FISC, wrote in his order on Wednesday. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Google is testing some changes to the way it displays search results, including a tweak to how it presents paid links that could throw off unsuspecting users. Paid links in Google's search results are marked today with a yellow shaded background. Under the experimental layout, which is being widely tested with users, a small yellow button that says "Ad" appears in front of paid links instead. For some users, the new labeling may suffice to denote what's an ad and what's not. But those not paying close attention might find themselves directed to a promotional site without asking for it. "For users who avoided ads before, it will be harder for them to tell the difference," said Mike Mothner, CEO of Wpromote, an online marketing agency that manages companies' SEO campaigns. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Mt. Gox may have collected a large sum in trading fees in the weeks before its closure, even though it was already aware that a vast number of bitcoins had gone missing, its U.S. bankruptcy filing suggests. A sworn declaration in the filing from Robert Karpeles, Mt. Gox 's CEO, reveals that the Bitcoin exchange knew in early February that its situation was far graver than it had disclosed at the time. Mt. Gox halted bitcoin withdrawals from its exchange on Feb. 7. It told customers it was investigating possible fraud due to a security issue called transaction malleability, but did not specify at the time how many bitcoins were missing. Buying and selling on the exchange continued until Feb. 25, when its website went dark. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here iMD said late Tuesday that it has added a network interface to an environmental controller designed for hydroponic marijuana farms, and is readying an app specifically designed to monitor large-scale pot farms. iMD and R-Quest Hydroponics said that its EMC-5000 controller already controls 8,000 watts' worth of lights, plus cooling fans, nutrient pumps, CO2 monitoring, and system shutdown functions if the temperature gets too high. The controller is already Web-accessible, and a smartphone app is in the works. The R-Quest EMC5000 controller. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here U.S. lawmakers had a chance to pose questions to the director of the National Security Agency on Wednesday but declined to ask him about reports that the agency plans to install malware on millions of computers. General Keith Alexander did not volunteer information about the reported NSA program to deploy tens of thousands of copies of surveillance malware on computers and networking devices around the world. Committee members didn't ask him about it, either. Instead, committee members praised the soon-to-retire Alexander for his years of service at the NSA and Cyber Command. "A grateful nation salutes you," said Representative Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here D-Wave wants its quantum computer to surpass the performance of traditional computers in the coming years, and has a processor roadmap that could make that happen. "We're at a point where we see that our current product is matching the performance of state-of-the-art traditional computers, which have had 70 years of innovation and trillions of dollars of investment. Over the next few years, we should surpass them," said Jeremy Hilton, D-Wave's vice president of processor development, in an email statement. D-Wave is perhaps the only company that sells quantum computers, which take a radically different approach to computing compared to today's servers. Quantum computing has been researched for decades with the goal of building a stable system, and D-Wave introduced what was considered the first ever quantum computer in 2011. Researchers have predicted that quantum computers will replace today's fastest computers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The U.S. National Security Agency has reportedly been working for the past several years on expanding its ability to infect computers with surveillance malware and creating a command-and-control infrastructure capable of managing millions of compromised systems at a time. According to media reports last year based on secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the NSA had deployed over 50,000 Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) "implants"—surveillance malware installed on computers and networking devices—around the world and their number was expected to reach 85,000 by the end of 2013. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The founder of the modern Web, Tim Berners-Lee, argued for government oversight of the Web as well as digital-rights-management (DRM) in an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit Wednesday afternoon. In fact, Berners-Lee adopted a somewhat more conservative stance on Reddit versus his comments to media like CNN and The Guardian, where he lobbied for an open Web. His appearance on Reddit and elsewhere commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the submission of his proposal for what eventually became the World Wide Web. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here VMware has introduced software designed to make it much easier for its customers to store large numbers of virtual machines (VMs) created with the company's software. "It is about management simplification," said Alberto Farronato, VMware director of product marketing for storage and availability. The software, VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN), is the company's first foray into storage virtualization. The company made its name offering server virtualization and is also ramping up offerings for desktop and network virtualization as well. The software provides storage space for the virtual disks (VDs) that hold the data needed to run VMs. The vSAN software is built directly into the kernel of VMware vSphere, the company's virtualization OS. "If you know how to manage vSphere, you already know how to manage Virtual SAN," Farronato said. "We have interoperability with all the key features of the vSphere platform." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The CEO of a software company that was supposedly developing a service similar to Apple's iTunes has admitted to scamming more than $2 million from investors by diverting the money into offshore accounts and spending it on personal matters. Wwebnet CEO Robert Kelly pled guilty to securities and wire fraud charges on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office. The $2 million was supposedly "intended for the development of a software program capable of transmitting music, videos, and movies over the Internet," according to the release. But instead, Kelly used the money to trade options, to pay his personal income taxes, and for other purposes unrelated to software development or other legitimate business expenses, it adds. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Searching on Yahoo will now deliver local business reviews from Yelp, through a partnership that could help Yahoo search compete against Google, or at least make it more useful. Yahoo said Wednesday that it had partnered with Yelp, as part of its efforts to provide a richer experience to its users. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. The announcement confirms rumors surrounding Yahoo's interest in Yelp to improve its local search results. Yahoo's revenue has sagged in recent quarters, and an enhanced version of search could help generate more ad sales. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Green America, a D.C.-based non-profit group, and The Nation magazine launched a campaign Wednesday intended to persuade consumers to boycott Apple products unless the company makes changes in its production and supply chain operations. But Apple rejected the call, saying it's been a leader in ridding toxic chemicals from its products and requires its suppliers to match or better U.S. safety regulations. The campaign is the latest in a string of attempts to get consumers to focus on worker conditions in the myriad of factories that makes Apple products such as iPhones and the components that go into them. A key message of the campaign is that it would cost just $1 for Apple to substitute out benzene and n-hexane, two of the most toxic chemicals used in its supply chain. The figure was derived from asking industry insiders their "best guess" for the cost involved, said Elizabeth O'Connell, campaign director, Green America. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you've struggled to play Respawn Entertainment's latest game, Titanfall, with a multi-GPU setup, you're not alone. The developer revealed late Tuesday that players were having difficulty making the game work on PCs that used multi-GPU setups—not all that uncommon for fans of the latest, graphically-intensive first-person shooters. The issue should be fixed, eventually, Respawn said in a tweet. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here ]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2107540/multi-gpu-problems-loss-of-progress-plague-titanfall-launch.html#tk.rss_all Wed, 12 Mar 2014 11:35:00 -0700 Grant Gross Grant Gross The U.S. Congress needs to consider alternatives to a Senate-passed bill that would require online retailers to collect sales tax based on the location of their customers, the chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee said Wednesday. The Marketplace Fairness Act, passed by a 42-vote majority in the Senate last May, has significant problems, including the public perception that it would be a tax increase for online shoppers, said Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican and the committee chairman. Shoppers in the 46 states with sales taxes are supposed to report their online and catalog purchases and pay taxes, but states don't enforce those regulations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Valve's Steam Machine consoles are getting a shot in the arm from Crytek, which has promised native Linux support in its latest game engine. The fourth-generation CryEngine is being used in several upcoming games, including Evolve, Homefront 2 and Star Citizen. It also powers the Xbox One launch title Ryse: Son of Rome. CryEngine's newfound Linux support doesn't necessarily mean these games are coming to Valve's Steam Machines, but it could allow for Linux ports in the future. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here By combining location data gathered using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi networks, German upstart Locoslab wants to improve the accuracy of indoor positioning, while at the same time implementing privacy features to assuage any fears users have. The company is taking part in the Code_n startup contest at the Cebit trade show in Hanover. The indoor location services market has been getting a lot of attention lately, thanks to technologies such as Apple's iBeacon. But even though many heavyweights are entering the sector, Locoslab CEO Marcus Handte is convinced it can compete. The company was founded at the end of 2012 as a spin-off of the University of Duisburg-Essen and is based in Bonn. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the underpinnings of the World Wide Web, has called for a digital-age "Magna Carta"—new rules to protect Internet users from government interference. Berners-Lee told The Guardian Tuesday that he believes the web now requires legalized protection. "We need a global constitution—a bill of rights," he told the paper. The interview was conducted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, which hits that milestone today. "The web's billions of users are what have made it great," Berners-Lee added, via a message from Webat25.org. "I hope that many of them will join me today in celebrating this important milestone. I also hope this anniversary will spark a global conversation about our need to defend principles that have made the Web successful, and to unlock the Web's untapped potential. I believe we can build a Web that truly is for everyone: one that is accessible to all, from any device, and one that empowers all of us to achieve our dignity, rights and potential as humans." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Nvidia announced a top-to-bottom refresh of its mobile graphics processor line Wednesday, promising chips that deliver more horsepower while consuming less electrical power. The company also announced a number of new design wins with big-name gaming laptop builders such as Alienware and Razer, as well as more mainstream OEMs like Lenovo. While PC sales in general continue to decline, sales of gaming PCs—particularly notebook gaming PCs—remain strong. According to a DFC/PC Gaming Alliance report, the PC gaming industry as a whole generated $25 billion in revenue in 2013, and those numbers are expected to grow by 8 percent annually. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Another year, another round of vastly improved ultra-thin gaming laptops from Razer. Last week I ventured to an undisclosed office location to check out the 2014 updates to the company's Razer Blade and Razer Blade Pro, and these already drool-worthy devices look even better than before—particularly the Razer Blade, which now packs a display with even higher resolution than Apple's Retina display, and a whole lot more. Read on for my hands-on impressions of both. Razer's gone all-in on the diminutive Blade this year, overhauling the screen, the internals, the keyboard—everything, really. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Microsoft has added features to the text editor of Outlook Web App to improve its handling of text, tables, images, and hyperlinks. With the enhancements, Microsoft wants to automate pasting tasks and reduce annoying formatting hiccups in the product, which is the browser-based version of Outlook for businesses that use Office 365 and Exchange server. "You'll spend less time formatting and more time communicating," wrote Microsoft officials Ef Regalado and Steve Chew in a blog post. The text editor now gives users three options for pasting in text into an email message: Paste As Is, which retains a "high fidelity" to the original formatting; Paste Simple HTML, which strips out font colors and sizes but preserves a document's "basic layout"; and Paste Text, which turns it into plain text. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The HP Z Display Z27i is a 27-inch professional desktop monitor with 2560 by 1440 native resolution. It features a high-quality IPS screen, LED backlighting, and an anti-glare that many people—including myself— find desirable. The Z27i also offers far greater ergonomic flexibility than most monitors, providing height adjustment, tilt, and the ability to rotate into portrait orientation. Other niceties include four downstream USB 3.0 ports and plenty of connection options such as VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. Though the Z27i does support DisplayPort, it does not offer the DisplayPort out connection necessary to allow for that spec's multi-streaming feature that lets you daisy chain monitors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Adobe released updates for Flash Player that fix two vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to bypass security controls in the software. One of the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2014-0504, can be exploited to read the contents of a computer's clipboard, the short-term data storage feature of the OS where information is kept during copy and paste operations. The second vulnerability, identified as CVE-2014-0503, could be exploited to bypass the browser's same-origin policy, an important security feature that prevents resources loaded from different domain names from interacting with each other. The security updates released by the company Tuesday are Flash Player 12.0.0.77 for Windows and Mac and Flash Player 11.2.202.346 for Linux. The Flash Player plug-ins distributed with Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 will be automatically updated to version 12.0.0.77 through the respective update mechanisms of those browsers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A U.S. district court judge on Tuesday froze the U.S. assets of Mark Karpeles, CEO of failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, and two associated companies, allowing lawyers to begin demanding documents from the three parties to investigate what they allege is a huge fraud. Mt. Gox, once the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, suspended trading on Feb. 25. Three days later, it said it had lost around 850,000 bitcoins. At the time, the bitcoins were worth around $474 million. The Tokyo-based exchange filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan shortly afterward, immediately raising the question of whether users would ever get their money back. Tuesday's ruling, at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, covers the CEO and Mt. Gox's U.S. subsidiary and Japanese parent company, Tibanne KK, but it doesn't cover the failed Mt. Gox itself, according to Chris Dore, a partner at Edelson PC in Chicago. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Reviewing a Chromebox, any Chromebox, is a challenge. All you get is a small, featureless box. It runs a simple OS based on a web browser. So hunting around for points of differentiation between Chromebox A and Chromebox B is difficult. At least Chromebooks bear all the hardware features of a typical PC notebook. They include a keyboard and display, and can be evaluated for their weight, shape and overall suitability as travel machines. But a Chromebox just... sits there. It can be a capable, desk-top vehicle for accessing the web via Google Chrome, and not much more. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here European politicians voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of new laws safeguarding citizens' data. The new Data Protection Regulation was approved with 621 votes for, 10 against and 22 abstentions. "The message the European Parliament is sending is unequivocal: This reform is a necessity, and now it is irreversible," said Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, who first proposed the law. "Strong data protection rules must be Europe's trade mark. Following the U.S. data spying scandals, data protection is more than ever a competitive advantage," she said in a statement. There had been concern that any delay in the vote would see the whole process put into the hands of a new parliament following elections in May. The current parliament will now speak to ministers from the EU's member states and agree on a timetable to implement the law. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) illegally shared data with foreign services and hacked Web forums without ministerial approval, according to a report made at the request of the Dutch House of Representatives. Although it is allowed to share data in bulk with other countries under existing partnerships, the MIVD illegally provided selected signal intelligence (SIGINT) data without permission of the relevant minister, according to the report, published late Tuesday. SIGINT data is collected by intercepting signals in bulk, for instance by gathering information of communication between satellites. This way of intercepting communications is used to gather metadata as well as the content of the communication itself, according to the report. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Cisco unveiled Wednesday an array of video conferencing products as it seeks to provide video collaboration systems for meeting rooms of all sizes. Most conference rooms either lack video conferencing equipment altogether or have systems that don't work properly, so Cisco is going after that market opportunity, according to Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of Cisco's Collaboration Technology Group. "We're not going to rest until every single room in every single business all over the world has extraordinary video conferencing and collaboration equipment. That's our mission," he said during a press conference. While Trollope articulated Cisco's goal in hyperbolic terms, it's clear the company sees a big gap that's waiting to be filled, and it intends to go after what it views as a grossly underserved business video conferencing market. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Quantum computing: the future?
Razer Blade
http://www.pcworld.com en-us Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:51:11 -0700 Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:51:11 -0700 Wed, 12 Mar 2014 23:05:10 -0700 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has temporarily reversed its earlier order that call records collected by the National Security Agency should be destroyed after the current five-year limit. The court modified its stand after a District Court in California on Monday ordered the government to retain phone records it collects in bulk from telecommunications carriers, as the metadata could be required as evidence in two civil lawsuits that challenge the NSA's phone records program under section 215 of the Patriot Act. The conflicting directives from federal courts puts the government in "an untenable position" and are likely to create confusion and uncertainty among all concerned about the status of the data collected over five years ago, Reggie B. Walton, presiding judge of the FISC, wrote in his order on Wednesday. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Google is testing some changes to the way it displays search results, including a tweak to how it presents paid links that could throw off unsuspecting users. Paid links in Google's search results are marked today with a yellow shaded background. Under the experimental layout, which is being widely tested with users, a small yellow button that says "Ad" appears in front of paid links instead. For some users, the new labeling may suffice to denote what's an ad and what's not. But those not paying close attention might find themselves directed to a promotional site without asking for it. "For users who avoided ads before, it will be harder for them to tell the difference," said Mike Mothner, CEO of Wpromote, an online marketing agency that manages companies' SEO campaigns. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Mt. Gox may have collected a large sum in trading fees in the weeks before its closure, even though it was already aware that a vast number of bitcoins had gone missing, its U.S. bankruptcy filing suggests. A sworn declaration in the filing from Robert Karpeles, Mt. Gox 's CEO, reveals that the Bitcoin exchange knew in early February that its situation was far graver than it had disclosed at the time. Mt. Gox halted bitcoin withdrawals from its exchange on Feb. 7. It told customers it was investigating possible fraud due to a security issue called transaction malleability, but did not specify at the time how many bitcoins were missing. Buying and selling on the exchange continued until Feb. 25, when its website went dark. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here iMD said late Tuesday that it has added a network interface to an environmental controller designed for hydroponic marijuana farms, and is readying an app specifically designed to monitor large-scale pot farms. iMD and R-Quest Hydroponics said that its EMC-5000 controller already controls 8,000 watts' worth of lights, plus cooling fans, nutrient pumps, CO2 monitoring, and system shutdown functions if the temperature gets too high. The controller is already Web-accessible, and a smartphone app is in the works. The R-Quest EMC5000 controller. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here U.S. lawmakers had a chance to pose questions to the director of the National Security Agency on Wednesday but declined to ask him about reports that the agency plans to install malware on millions of computers. General Keith Alexander did not volunteer information about the reported NSA program to deploy tens of thousands of copies of surveillance malware on computers and networking devices around the world. Committee members didn't ask him about it, either. Instead, committee members praised the soon-to-retire Alexander for his years of service at the NSA and Cyber Command. "A grateful nation salutes you," said Representative Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here D-Wave wants its quantum computer to surpass the performance of traditional computers in the coming years, and has a processor roadmap that could make that happen. "We're at a point where we see that our current product is matching the performance of state-of-the-art traditional computers, which have had 70 years of innovation and trillions of dollars of investment. Over the next few years, we should surpass them," said Jeremy Hilton, D-Wave's vice president of processor development, in an email statement. D-Wave is perhaps the only company that sells quantum computers, which take a radically different approach to computing compared to today's servers. Quantum computing has been researched for decades with the goal of building a stable system, and D-Wave introduced what was considered the first ever quantum computer in 2011. Researchers have predicted that quantum computers will replace today's fastest computers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The U.S. National Security Agency has reportedly been working for the past several years on expanding its ability to infect computers with surveillance malware and creating a command-and-control infrastructure capable of managing millions of compromised systems at a time. According to media reports last year based on secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the NSA had deployed over 50,000 Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) "implants"—surveillance malware installed on computers and networking devices—around the world and their number was expected to reach 85,000 by the end of 2013. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The founder of the modern Web, Tim Berners-Lee, argued for government oversight of the Web as well as digital-rights-management (DRM) in an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit Wednesday afternoon. In fact, Berners-Lee adopted a somewhat more conservative stance on Reddit versus his comments to media like CNN and The Guardian, where he lobbied for an open Web. His appearance on Reddit and elsewhere commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the submission of his proposal for what eventually became the World Wide Web. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here VMware has introduced software designed to make it much easier for its customers to store large numbers of virtual machines (VMs) created with the company's software. "It is about management simplification," said Alberto Farronato, VMware director of product marketing for storage and availability. The software, VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN), is the company's first foray into storage virtualization. The company made its name offering server virtualization and is also ramping up offerings for desktop and network virtualization as well. The software provides storage space for the virtual disks (VDs) that hold the data needed to run VMs. The vSAN software is built directly into the kernel of VMware vSphere, the company's virtualization OS. "If you know how to manage vSphere, you already know how to manage Virtual SAN," Farronato said. "We have interoperability with all the key features of the vSphere platform." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The CEO of a software company that was supposedly developing a service similar to Apple's iTunes has admitted to scamming more than $2 million from investors by diverting the money into offshore accounts and spending it on personal matters. Wwebnet CEO Robert Kelly pled guilty to securities and wire fraud charges on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office. The $2 million was supposedly "intended for the development of a software program capable of transmitting music, videos, and movies over the Internet," according to the release. But instead, Kelly used the money to trade options, to pay his personal income taxes, and for other purposes unrelated to software development or other legitimate business expenses, it adds. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Searching on Yahoo will now deliver local business reviews from Yelp, through a partnership that could help Yahoo search compete against Google, or at least make it more useful. Yahoo said Wednesday that it had partnered with Yelp, as part of its efforts to provide a richer experience to its users. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. The announcement confirms rumors surrounding Yahoo's interest in Yelp to improve its local search results. Yahoo's revenue has sagged in recent quarters, and an enhanced version of search could help generate more ad sales. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Green America, a D.C.-based non-profit group, and The Nation magazine launched a campaign Wednesday intended to persuade consumers to boycott Apple products unless the company makes changes in its production and supply chain operations. But Apple rejected the call, saying it's been a leader in ridding toxic chemicals from its products and requires its suppliers to match or better U.S. safety regulations. The campaign is the latest in a string of attempts to get consumers to focus on worker conditions in the myriad of factories that makes Apple products such as iPhones and the components that go into them. A key message of the campaign is that it would cost just $1 for Apple to substitute out benzene and n-hexane, two of the most toxic chemicals used in its supply chain. The figure was derived from asking industry insiders their "best guess" for the cost involved, said Elizabeth O'Connell, campaign director, Green America. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you've struggled to play Respawn Entertainment's latest game, Titanfall, with a multi-GPU setup, you're not alone. The developer revealed late Tuesday that players were having difficulty making the game work on PCs that used multi-GPU setups—not all that uncommon for fans of the latest, graphically-intensive first-person shooters. The issue should be fixed, eventually, Respawn said in a tweet. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here ]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2107540/multi-gpu-problems-loss-of-progress-plague-titanfall-launch.html#tk.rss_all Wed, 12 Mar 2014 11:35:00 -0700 Grant Gross Grant Gross The U.S. Congress needs to consider alternatives to a Senate-passed bill that would require online retailers to collect sales tax based on the location of their customers, the chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee said Wednesday. The Marketplace Fairness Act, passed by a 42-vote majority in the Senate last May, has significant problems, including the public perception that it would be a tax increase for online shoppers, said Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican and the committee chairman. Shoppers in the 46 states with sales taxes are supposed to report their online and catalog purchases and pay taxes, but states don't enforce those regulations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Valve's Steam Machine consoles are getting a shot in the arm from Crytek, which has promised native Linux support in its latest game engine. The fourth-generation CryEngine is being used in several upcoming games, including Evolve, Homefront 2 and Star Citizen. It also powers the Xbox One launch title Ryse: Son of Rome. CryEngine's newfound Linux support doesn't necessarily mean these games are coming to Valve's Steam Machines, but it could allow for Linux ports in the future. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here By combining location data gathered using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi networks, German upstart Locoslab wants to improve the accuracy of indoor positioning, while at the same time implementing privacy features to assuage any fears users have. The company is taking part in the Code_n startup contest at the Cebit trade show in Hanover. The indoor location services market has been getting a lot of attention lately, thanks to technologies such as Apple's iBeacon. But even though many heavyweights are entering the sector, Locoslab CEO Marcus Handte is convinced it can compete. The company was founded at the end of 2012 as a spin-off of the University of Duisburg-Essen and is based in Bonn. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the underpinnings of the World Wide Web, has called for a digital-age "Magna Carta"—new rules to protect Internet users from government interference. Berners-Lee told The Guardian Tuesday that he believes the web now requires legalized protection. "We need a global constitution—a bill of rights," he told the paper. The interview was conducted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, which hits that milestone today. "The web's billions of users are what have made it great," Berners-Lee added, via a message from Webat25.org. "I hope that many of them will join me today in celebrating this important milestone. I also hope this anniversary will spark a global conversation about our need to defend principles that have made the Web successful, and to unlock the Web's untapped potential. I believe we can build a Web that truly is for everyone: one that is accessible to all, from any device, and one that empowers all of us to achieve our dignity, rights and potential as humans." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Nvidia announced a top-to-bottom refresh of its mobile graphics processor line Wednesday, promising chips that deliver more horsepower while consuming less electrical power. The company also announced a number of new design wins with big-name gaming laptop builders such as Alienware and Razer, as well as more mainstream OEMs like Lenovo. While PC sales in general continue to decline, sales of gaming PCs—particularly notebook gaming PCs—remain strong. According to a DFC/PC Gaming Alliance report, the PC gaming industry as a whole generated $25 billion in revenue in 2013, and those numbers are expected to grow by 8 percent annually. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Another year, another round of vastly improved ultra-thin gaming laptops from Razer. Last week I ventured to an undisclosed office location to check out the 2014 updates to the company's Razer Blade and Razer Blade Pro, and these already drool-worthy devices look even better than before—particularly the Razer Blade, which now packs a display with even higher resolution than Apple's Retina display, and a whole lot more. Read on for my hands-on impressions of both. Razer's gone all-in on the diminutive Blade this year, overhauling the screen, the internals, the keyboard—everything, really. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Microsoft has added features to the text editor of Outlook Web App to improve its handling of text, tables, images, and hyperlinks. With the enhancements, Microsoft wants to automate pasting tasks and reduce annoying formatting hiccups in the product, which is the browser-based version of Outlook for businesses that use Office 365 and Exchange server. "You'll spend less time formatting and more time communicating," wrote Microsoft officials Ef Regalado and Steve Chew in a blog post. The text editor now gives users three options for pasting in text into an email message: Paste As Is, which retains a "high fidelity" to the original formatting; Paste Simple HTML, which strips out font colors and sizes but preserves a document's "basic layout"; and Paste Text, which turns it into plain text. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The HP Z Display Z27i is a 27-inch professional desktop monitor with 2560 by 1440 native resolution. It features a high-quality IPS screen, LED backlighting, and an anti-glare that many people—including myself— find desirable. The Z27i also offers far greater ergonomic flexibility than most monitors, providing height adjustment, tilt, and the ability to rotate into portrait orientation. Other niceties include four downstream USB 3.0 ports and plenty of connection options such as VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. Though the Z27i does support DisplayPort, it does not offer the DisplayPort out connection necessary to allow for that spec's multi-streaming feature that lets you daisy chain monitors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Adobe released updates for Flash Player that fix two vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to bypass security controls in the software. One of the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2014-0504, can be exploited to read the contents of a computer's clipboard, the short-term data storage feature of the OS where information is kept during copy and paste operations. The second vulnerability, identified as CVE-2014-0503, could be exploited to bypass the browser's same-origin policy, an important security feature that prevents resources loaded from different domain names from interacting with each other. The security updates released by the company Tuesday are Flash Player 12.0.0.77 for Windows and Mac and Flash Player 11.2.202.346 for Linux. The Flash Player plug-ins distributed with Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 will be automatically updated to version 12.0.0.77 through the respective update mechanisms of those browsers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A U.S. district court judge on Tuesday froze the U.S. assets of Mark Karpeles, CEO of failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, and two associated companies, allowing lawyers to begin demanding documents from the three parties to investigate what they allege is a huge fraud. Mt. Gox, once the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, suspended trading on Feb. 25. Three days later, it said it had lost around 850,000 bitcoins. At the time, the bitcoins were worth around $474 million. The Tokyo-based exchange filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan shortly afterward, immediately raising the question of whether users would ever get their money back. Tuesday's ruling, at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, covers the CEO and Mt. Gox's U.S. subsidiary and Japanese parent company, Tibanne KK, but it doesn't cover the failed Mt. Gox itself, according to Chris Dore, a partner at Edelson PC in Chicago. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Reviewing a Chromebox, any Chromebox, is a challenge. All you get is a small, featureless box. It runs a simple OS based on a web browser. So hunting around for points of differentiation between Chromebox A and Chromebox B is difficult. At least Chromebooks bear all the hardware features of a typical PC notebook. They include a keyboard and display, and can be evaluated for their weight, shape and overall suitability as travel machines. But a Chromebox just... sits there. It can be a capable, desk-top vehicle for accessing the web via Google Chrome, and not much more. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here European politicians voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of new laws safeguarding citizens' data. The new Data Protection Regulation was approved with 621 votes for, 10 against and 22 abstentions. "The message the European Parliament is sending is unequivocal: This reform is a necessity, and now it is irreversible," said Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, who first proposed the law. "Strong data protection rules must be Europe's trade mark. Following the U.S. data spying scandals, data protection is more than ever a competitive advantage," she said in a statement. There had been concern that any delay in the vote would see the whole process put into the hands of a new parliament following elections in May. The current parliament will now speak to ministers from the EU's member states and agree on a timetable to implement the law. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) illegally shared data with foreign services and hacked Web forums without ministerial approval, according to a report made at the request of the Dutch House of Representatives. Although it is allowed to share data in bulk with other countries under existing partnerships, the MIVD illegally provided selected signal intelligence (SIGINT) data without permission of the relevant minister, according to the report, published late Tuesday. SIGINT data is collected by intercepting signals in bulk, for instance by gathering information of communication between satellites. This way of intercepting communications is used to gather metadata as well as the content of the communication itself, according to the report. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Cisco unveiled Wednesday an array of video conferencing products as it seeks to provide video collaboration systems for meeting rooms of all sizes. Most conference rooms either lack video conferencing equipment altogether or have systems that don't work properly, so Cisco is going after that market opportunity, according to Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of Cisco's Collaboration Technology Group. "We're not going to rest until every single room in every single business all over the world has extraordinary video conferencing and collaboration equipment. That's our mission," he said during a press conference. While Trollope articulated Cisco's goal in hyperbolic terms, it's clear the company sees a big gap that's waiting to be filled, and it intends to go after what it views as a grossly underserved business video conferencing market. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Quantum computing: the future?
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