When Apple announced last week that Steve Jobs had died, there were many questions. When did it happen? What was the cause of death? What will happen to Apple? Of all the questions being asked, it’s unlikely that many were thinking about who would play him in the movie of his life. However, it has indeed become a prominent question following news that Sony Pictures is in the process of acquiring the movie rights to the upcoming Steve Jobs biography.

Penned by Walter Isaacson, the biography is based on more than 40 interviews with Steve Jobs and spans nearly 450 pages. Due out on October 24, the book has received heightened amounts of attention in the six days since Steve Jobs passed away from respiratory arrest caused by a pancreatic tumor. Late last week, when rumors began circulating that Sony was looking to acquire the rights to a movie based on the book, reports said the company was offering a cool one million dollars.

While we don’t know who will play Steve Jobs in the movie (perhaps Noah Wyle will step back into the role?) CVG reports that Mark Gordon (Saving Private Ryan, The Day After Tomorrow, Source Code) will produce the film for Sony, so we know there’s already some talent behind this production.

SOURCE via CVG

EA has issued a statement in regards to an objective in Battlefield 3 that requires players to shoot police. Last week the ESRB rated EA’s upcoming shooter Battlefield 3 with an unsurprising “Mature” rating. The board noted realistic gunfire, splashes of blood, stabbing soldiers to death with knives, and even a sequence where a restrained character’s throat is slit off-screen as a cause for the rating. No real big surprise, honestly.

But then the ESRB also revealed a mission objective to be completed that now has EA explaining itself: shooting police officers. This revelation actually conflicts with comments made by the game’s producer Patrick Back earlier this year who said the experience needed to be built so that players are not put in a position to do bad things.

“If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go dark side – because people think it’s cool to be naughty, they won’t be caught,” he explained.

Of course, there’s now speculation that the game’s cop-killing feature will likely spark an outrage from the press and government officials. Similar game features like the “No Russian” level in 2009′s Modern Warfare 2, the chase scene on the London Underground in the upcoming game Modern Warfare 3, and the Taliban multiplayer option in last year’s Medal of Honor have caused enough controversy to force Activision and EA to alter the games and/or issue defending statements. Controversial situations are seemingly great for advertisement.

However on Monday EA issued a response to the police shooting objective, although it’s not one you’d expect. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. For God’s sake, there is a nuke in Paris! Millions of lives are at stake!!”

Battlefield 3 arrives on October 25 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC.

Monday Apple unleashed Facebook v4.0 on the App Store which supports the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad (finally) using iOS 4.0 and later. But the real big news here is that the social website has also launched its HTML5-based Facebook Platform, aka Project Spartan. As of this writing, the actual mobile sites and Android’s Facebook app remain unchanged, but the iOS version has received a dramatic overhaul that allows users to launch HTML5-based apps or those already installed locally on the device.

“We are at the beginning of bringing Facebook Platform apps to mobile,” said Facebook’s Luke Shepard. “The features we are launching today are still under development. They will evolve as we learn more about building richer social experiences on mobile devices. In addition, we will extend our native support for more mobile platforms such as Android in the near future. We are excited to see what you will build with these features today and look forward to working with you as we improve these features.”

To test out the new HTML5 platform, the updated Facebook app was pulled up on an iPod Touch. Monday Storm8 announced that three of its games — World War, iMobsters and Vampires Live — are now available for the Facebook Platform. As these games aren’t currently installed locally on the device, we decided to test Vampires Live via the Facebook app.

Read more…

Microsoft has launched a new marketing campaign promoting its web browser. Just like the TV campaign, the focus is once again security and is at least partially based on the results recently published by security company NSS Labs. This time, the campaign appears to be on the Internet and enables users to instantly test the security of their browser and get a dose of reality just how secure or vulnerable the software is. Before you run the test, let me advise you that, unless you use IE9 or IE10, you won’t like what you see.

Only IE scores a full score of 4 possible points. The current version of Chrome (14) ends up at 2.5 and Firefox (7) at 2. If you are still using Firefox 3.6, you get only 1.5. The breakdown, according to the website is that both Chrome and Firefox do not protect users against dangerous downloads. However, Microsoft’s criteria are limited to socially engineered malware (which refers to the test conducted by NSS Labs) and “distinct” download warnings against apps that are not yet confirmed as malware.

According to Microsoft, Chrome and Firefox are just as good in phishing protection as IE and Chrome even trumps IE in two out of seven criteria describing browser attacks (while Chrome also two other disciplines against IE). Firefox is the worst browser in direct attack vulnerability, according to Microsoft. Both Chrome and Firefox lose against IE in website attack protection.

Of course, one may argue that rating a browser’s security on 16 hand-picked features may be problematic. It may be difficult to build a case on those claims; especially if IE has only three gaps while Chrome comes in with seven misses and Firefox 7 with nine. Could Mozilla have picked 16 categories that would have made IE look bad? Sure. Could Google have slanted the criteria to its faster update cycle? Of course, on the fairness side, Microsoft does offer download links to all three browsers.

Check out Microsoft’s latest effort here.

Last week brought us a glimpse of an Xbox 720 logo in Real Steel, and now it seems staffs at Redmond are getting a little bit loose-lipped regarding the project. Despite the fact that it was yet to be made official by Microsoft, several Microsoft staff have listed the next-gen Xbox console as part of their responsibilities on resume and professional networking site LinkedIn.

Gematsu reports that Twitter user @supererogatory recently came across several Microsoft employees working on ‘next generation’ stuff at Microsoft’s Xbox division in LinkedIn listings dating back to 2010. There’s Jeff Faulkner, who describes his position as “Xbox Next Gen Creative Director.” Along with Faulkner, there’s “Senior Creative Director for Xbox,” Jonathan Harris, who is currently “designing the next generation of entertainment.” They’re joined by  Patrick Corrigan, tasked with “providing groundwork and integration for branding elements for next-gen Xbox on all forms of media. Ranging from print to UI across future releases of the Xbox platform,” and Joe Langevin, an “Xbox Hardware Intern at Microsoft,” who says he’s working on “high speed data buses to prevent electromagnetic interference in next-gen devices.” Of these four, Faulkner, Harris and Langevin are all still at Microsoft’s Xbox division, Corrigan moved on to another opportunity in June of this year.

Of course, news that Microsoft is working on a next generation console should come as no surprise to game fans. However, staffs are clearly getting a bit sloppy in their efforts to keep the new Xbox under wraps. Let’s hope this means we’ll hear something official on it in the coming months.

It’s been a long, weird and winding road, but it appears that the saga surrounding the leaked iPhone 4 prototype that got Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s home raided is finally over. The two men accused of selling the device to Chen, Brian Hogan and Sage Wallower, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of theft of lost property. The two were sentenced to a year probation, 40 hours of public service and told to pay $250 in damages to Apple. The rest of the $5,000 they received for the prototype is theirs to keep. Through it all Chen and Gizmodo have escaped prosecution and, with the two who found and sold the device receiving barely a slap on the wrist, it looks like it’s time to close the book on this tale. Perhaps crime doesn’t pay, but it doesn’t appear to cost a whole heck of a lot either.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal

Through first quarter of 2012, Intel will be releasing new SSDs: Intel SSD 520 “Cherryville” Series (replacement for the Intel SSD 510 Series), Intel SSD 710 “Lyndonville” Series (Enterprise HET-MLC SSD replacement for X25-E series), and Intel SSD 720 “Ramsdale” Series (PCIe based SSD). In addition, you will be seeing two additional mSATA SSDs codenamed “Hawley Creek” by the end of the fourth quarter 2011.

Starting with the second quarter 2012, Intel looks to be launching “Ramsdale MLC” PCI-Express SSD, a variant of Ramsdale that uses HET-MLC NAND flash memory, instead of SLC. The capacities will double from 200/400 GB versions to 400/800 GB versions. HET-MLC gives the write endurance comparable to a SLC SSD, while getting the capacity advantage that MLC offers to users. In addition, Intel plans to launch codename “King Crest”, a successor of SSD 520 “Cherryville” series. The drive is set to utilize a SATA 6.0 Gb/s interface and 25 nm HET-MLC NAND flash instead of regular 25 nm NAND flash found on SSD 520 series.

As for third quarter 2012, we see Intel set to launch codenamed “Taylorsville”, which looks set to be successor of the SSD 710 series. “Taylorsville” will be available in capacities of 800 GB, 400 GB, and 200 GB. It will follow suit with the SSD 710 series and will use HET-MLC NAND flash memory, along with SATA 6.0 Gb/s interface. To finish off Q3 ’12, Intel is set to launch codenamed “Lincoln Crest”, which looks set to be successor of the SSD 320 series. Though capacity availability is unknown at this time, the “Lincoln Crest” looks to make the final transition for all Intel SSD drives to MLC-HET NAND flash memory and SATA 6.0 Gb/s interface.

SOURCE via vr-zone