Now for some news much closer to home, it seems as if officials have their heads in a far more sensible place over such a long period of time. Kuala Lumpur — already home to one of the world’s most lust-worthy airports and some of the most accessible / affordable mobile data plans — will soon mandate that all new restaurants provide WiFi to their customers. And by “WiFi,” we mean “access to the entire internet.” According to local paper New Strait Times, the rule will be enforced as early as April, applying to eatery owners operating on premises larger than 120 square meters. We’re told that existing owners will be forced to comply when renewing their license, and while the waves won’t have to be given away for free, they’ll be encouraged to charge no more than a “reasonable fee.” Furthermore, the government is considering dipping into its own pockets in order to extend gratis WiFi to public facilities in the city, likely as a follow-up plan to the expiring WirelessKL contract. Now, I’m fine with free WiFi, but if the connection is always down, then this will be a blunder…

SOURCE via New Straits Times

Apparently the UK’s Ministry of Defence has some pretty unexciting war simulators. So unexciting, in fact, that the MoD’s Science and Technology lab – the folks responsible for managing said simulators – is looking to the likes of Battlefield and Call of Duty to help up its game.

Speaking to UK newspaper The Guardian, technical team leader Andrew Poulter ran down a brief history of the UK’s past with simulators, and detailed the current predicament he believes the MoD is facing. “Back in the 1980s and 1990s, defence was far out in front in terms of quality of simulation. Military-built simulators were state of the art. But now, for £50 [$77], you can buy a commercial game that will be far more realistic than the sorts of tools we were using.”

The MoD has been employing a simulator known as “Virtual Battlespace 2,” which, strictly from a sequels perspective, is way behind pretty much every video game that exists. The simulator was originally created by Operation Flashpoint dev Bohemia Interactive, which itself is not exactly considered at the forefront of game development. According to Poulter, that’ll be changing in the coming months, with a reinvestment in his team from the MoD to bring in new technology from more modern shooters.

“The weapons need to be credible. If they fire a rifle and the bullet travels three and a half miles, then that is not right. If they are steering a vehicle, then that has to be right too. Realism is more important than entertainment. Levels of immersion are very important,” he said. And it definitely doesn’t hurt that the soldiers tend to be more engaged with virtual simulations than paperwork. “It is certainly a lot more fun than going through lists of checks and box-ticking. We want them to think ‘I would quite like to do a bit more of that kind of thing’. So they might spend 10 minutes [on a simulation] after reading papers in the morning, or in their spare time.”

And let’s be fair, wouldn’t soldiers be playing games like these in their spare time anyway? Why not direct that attention to something that could potentially save their lives? Poulter seemed to agree, as he concluded, “It has been invaluable. It is being taken seriously. It’s not just a game.” We feel the same way about our Battlefield 3 sessions, but don’t tell anyone. Shhh!!!

According to Microsoft, better venues are emerging and CES did not align with its product launch schedule anyway, so it was a conclusive step to cancel future CES events altogether, especially since the company will be represented by hundreds or smaller exhibitors anyway. However, as Microsoft is downplaying the importance of CES, Intel is stressing the importance of CES for the industry, confirming that the company won’t abandon the event.

In a blog post, Intel says that CES will remain the “biggest stage for [the] tech industry” with or without Microsoft. It is the largest trade show in the United States and there was no reason to believe that is going to change, the company believes. For 2012, the show has grown back to its 2007 dimensions with 1.8 million square feet of space and 2700 exhibitors who are planning more than 20,000 product launches. In short, CES will turn, once again, into a Disneyworld for adults, with entertainment, toys and long lines that will surely test your patience as long as you are not attending the show as a virtual guest.

While IBM was often linked to the demise of Comdex, Intel mentions that Apple isn’t at CES as well and the tradeshow still thrives. In fact, CES may be much more about electronics than Microsoft’s Windows and variations that rarely have been new at CES anyway. However, the show organizers will have to fill a gaping hole that is the opening keynote that has been staged by Microsoft since 1998. Bill Gates keynoted the show from 1998 to 2008, except in 1999, when Sir Howard Stringer hosted the prestigious event. Steve Ballmer took over in 2008 but never matched the draw of Bill Gates. However, Ballmer’s enthusiasm for his products lights up a stage in a way that will be tough to achieve by others. As much as we do not miss Microsoft’s booth at CES, we surely will miss the keynote.

It seems we’re not the only ones indulging in a little bit of holiday shopping. Sony has announced that it is selling its share of the joint LCD-production venture it signed into with Samsung seven years ago.

In a deal worth $600 million, Samsung will acquire Sony’s portion of the venture, which the two parties signed into in 2004. The deal will see Samsung pay 1.08 trillion Korean won, or $935 million, to Sony and S-LCD will become a wholly-owned Samsung subsidiary.

Additionally, the two companies have entered into a new agreement for the supply and purchase of LCD panels that Sony says will ensure a ‘flexible and steady’ supply of LCDs from Samsung without the costs of operating the manufacturing facility. In exchange, Samsung expects to benefit from more flexibility, speed and efficiency in both production and business operations.

Sony says that as a result of the transaction, it is now expecting a non-cash impairment loss of roughly 66 billion yen, or $847 million, for the next fiscal quarter (ending March 2012). However, the company also said in its statement that this one-time loss will be canceled out by the annual savings made from off-loading its half of S-LCD. The current estimate of the yearly savings is 50 billion yen, or $642 million.

SOURCE via Sony

Austerity means the military can’t afford the big-budget training exercises to battle-harden new recruits, so it’s relying more on computer simulations. Sadly, Virtual Battlespace 2 can’t compete with the Hollywood-style excitement of Modern Warfare. That’s why it’s buying in game engines from the studios (VB2 was based on tech licensed from the makers of Operation Flashpoint) and cutting out the unrealistic physics — such as rifle bullets flying three miles and vehicles that don’t obey gravity. It’s hoped the project will keep the attention of death-match hardened trainees and encourage them to play it in their own time: the team were told that two soldiers learned enough skills to stay alive during combat thanks to marathon sessions in the game. If you’ve just unwrapped an FPS for the holidays, you can now tell disapproving family members that it’s educational.

SOURCE via The Guardian

According to Flurry Analytics, a total of 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated worldwide on Christmas Day — that’s a 353-percent increase from Christmas Day 2010. Google’s Andy Rubin claims that 3.7 million Android devices were activated on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Based on those two numbers, its speculated that the total number of iOS activations on December 25 was at least 4.2 million. Needless to say, Apple saw a very lucrative holiday season.

To some degree, GameStop’s holiday season in regards to iOS devices was just as lucrative. According to the retailer, the current trade-in program — which provides up to $180 for an iPod Touch, up to $300 for an iPhone and up to $400 for an iPad — has exceeded the company’s expectations. However the drawback to this program is that iOS owners can’t get cash for their used device — they receive in-store credit instead.

“We expect to see strong post-holiday traffic as customers trade in older models that were replaced by gifts,” stated GameStop president Tony Bartel without providing actual pre-Christmas trade-in unit numbers. The company expects to continue to expand the availability of GameStop refurbished devices for sale in select stores and online.

GameStop’s iOS trade-in program began back in September and has since seen “strong consumer enthusiasm for the program.” Naturally consumers can also purchase pre-owned iOS products like the 8 GB iPhone 3G or $149.99, the 16 GB iPhone 4 for $369.99, an original 32 GB iPad Wi-Fi only bundle for $424.99 and a 32 GB iPod Touch Gen 3 for $189.99. The 1 GB iPod Shuffle Gen 2 costs a mere $19.99.

GameStop also provides a load of Android-based tablets too like the 7-inch Acer Iconia, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer and Transformer Prime and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. As of this writing, the sub-$400 tablets are all sold out.

Google’s SVP of Mobile just provided us with another glimpse inside the horse’s mouth, claiming that Android scored 3.7 million new device activations over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. To put that in context, Flurry reported that total Android and iOS activations on Christmas Day alone totaled 6.8 million. If we can accept a very high margin of error, and if we assume that the vast majority of Rubin’s activations were on the 25th, we might extrapolate a roughly even split between the two rival platforms. Considering where Android was just a couple of Christmas’s ago, it’s no wonder that Mr Rubin is in the tweeting mood.

SOURCE via BGR

On the plus side, your router’s mostly secure. Security researcher Stefan Viehbock has just discovered a major security hole which allowed him to use a brute force technique to access a WPS PIN-protected network in about two hours. According to Viehbock, a design flaw allows the WPS protocol’s 8-digit PIN security to fall dramatically as additional attempts are made. With each attempt, the router will send a message stating whether the first four digits are correct while the last digit of the key is used as a checksum and then given out by the router in negotiation. As a result, the 100,000,000 possibilities that the WPS should represent becomes roughly to 11,000.

The US-CERT has picked up on this and advised users to disable WPS on their routers. Viehbock, in turn, claims to have attempted to discuss the vulnerability with hardware vendors such as Buffalo, D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear, but says he has been roundly ignored and that no public acknowledgement of the issue has been released. As a possible final step, Viehbock has promised to release a brute force tool soon, thereby pushing the manufacturers to work to resolve the issue.

SOURCE via The Verge

Among those predictions are some that you may expect, including a growing trend toward cyberwar efforts, an increasing focus on mobile computing devices, hacktivism, and attacks on online currencies as well as strategies to place rogue certificates.

However, there were two predictions that stood out in particular. McAfee believes that there will be a trend of advertisers adopting techniques used by spammers. The company expects legal advertisers to be purchasing email lists, including those of companies that are going out of business. The resulting “legal” spam and “snowshoe spamming” are forecast to grow at a faster rate than illegal phishing and confidence scams, McAfee said.

2012 may also see an emergence of attacks on embedded hardware and chips that are an integral part of a larger computer system, for example in cars. McAfee said that proof-of-concept codes exploiting embedded systems will be more effective in 2012, with malware that is much more sophisticated to carry out hardware attacks and set the stage for long-term access to a system.

The security firm also noted that new security features in operating systems will force hackers to find other vulnerabilities outside the operating system. A possibility could be persistent malware in network cards, hard drives and even system BIOS (Basic Input Output System).

IBM has predicted the future, and it contains mind-reading machines and the death of character-based passwords. This revelation stems from the company’s sixth annual Five in Five where it predicts five innovations that will change our lives within the next five years. The company assesses not just the availability of a new technology, but also the likelihood of its large scale adoption.

“In addition to the PR value, we complete this exercise annually because it makes IBMers think hard about what’s possible and to strive to make it so,” writes IBM’s Steve Hamm. “Simply put, the process of choosing the predictions and defending them is good for us.” Read more…