Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton has made it abundantly clear this weekend that the PlayStation 4 is not coming any time soon.

Tretton says the PS3 is only "in the first 25% to 30% of this generation," meaning there is at least 6 more years before a PS4 is sitting on retail shelves.

"I would say we're sitting in the catbird seat," Tretton added, via CVG. "We've just passed the third year of the PlayStation 3 and we're just hitting our stride. And I don't think anyone is saying, 'This is a five-year cycle; what's new on the horizon?' I can't even imagine what can be done technically beyond the PlayStation 3 in the near future. A question I often get is when we are going to see PlayStation 4. When somebody can craft the technology that exceeds what we're able to do on the PS3, but we are still just starting to harness it."

Although not related, Tretton also said he expected God of War III sales to "blot out the sun."

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Androidandme has reported today that all American Android smartphones will be receiving an update to firmware version 2.1, although some will have features missing.

Notably included is the now aging T-Mobile G1, the first Android phone ever, which is still currently running firmware 1.6, like many other devices.

The report does note that some phone will have to be wiped first before they can be upgraded, which shouldn't be too big of a problem as long as you backup your device beforehand. Some phones will also need to be connected to a PC for the install to work, although it is unclear which phones will need the extra effort.

The updates are expected to "still be on schedule for Q2 2010," with the site saying the G1 and the myTouch 3G getting the update first.

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LG Electronics has announced that it will offer up a 15-inch organic light-emitting diode (OLED) television in Austria in May. This will be the world's largest OLED television available when it launches. The LG 15EL9500 is only 3mm thick and provides an impressive contrast ratio of 10,000,000:1, response time of 0.001ms and what LG describes as "extremely low power consumption".

"The OLED technology uses an organic material that can apply to very thin and even flexible surfaces. Therefore, the 15EL9500 is one of the slimmest TVs in our portfolio and is ideal for any trend-setter," said Reinhard Huebner, Retail Marketing, LG Electronics Austria (translated from German).



The LG 15EL9500 is technically HD Ready, capable of 1366x768 display. It consumers one-third of the power that an LCD screen of the same size consumes. It features TruMotion 100Hz technology and a USB 2.0 port for connecting removable media. It can play back DivX (in HD), MP3 or JPEG images.

As with any OLED television, the price is steep. It will go on sale in May in Austria for a staggering €1,999.

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A Judge has dismissed a case brought against Sony by a disabled gamer who claimed that people with disabilities were being denied access to Sony services. The gamer, Alexander Stern, had sued Sony Corporation of America, Sony Computer Entertainment America and Sony Online Entertainment because his visual processing impairments made it impossible to use video games created by Sony.

According to the complaint, "his visual processing impairments prevent him from fully enjoying the video games manufactured by Sony, some of which are played on gaming systems with internet connections through which players in different locations can communicate and play with or against one another."

The reference to "gaming systems with internet connections through which players in different locations can communicate" is essentially an argument that it qualifies as "public accommodation", which would be necessary for a discrimination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title III.

The court ruling denied that Sony services are a "place of public accommodation" and thus, cannot be held liable then for violating ADA Title III.

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SoundExchange, the establishment that has been tasked with collecting royalties for copyright holders and artists from music streaming services on the Internet, satellite radio and maybe traditional radio soon too, has told artists to label their music properly if they wish to receive their royalties.

SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson wrote in Billboard that the company actually has trouble finding out who owns the copyright to some songs it tracks and claims royalties for. He said the organization had about $40 million in royalties that it collected in 2008, which it could not distribute to artists and copyright owners because it couldn't find them.

Why not? Because the copyright owners didn't attach enough information to the song. Simson pleaded that at the very least, every song should include metadata identifying the artist, song name, album name, label or copyright owner.

SoundExchange also is holding $39 million for artists and copyright holders that simply have not registered with SoundExchange yet.

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Apple Inc. has reported that it discovered 17 violations of its Supplier Code of Conduct by foreign suppliers. Apple began carrying out audits back in 2006 when it emerged that workers were being abused and mistreated by a Chinese manufacturer that assembled iPods. Three of the 17 violations involved the hiring of underage workers.

"Across the three facilities, our auditors found records of 11 workers who had been hired prior to reaching the legal age, although the workers were no longer underage or no longer in active employment at the time of our audit," Apple said in its report. The auditors reviewed the employment records to analyze how the underage workers were hired, and required each facility to implement better identification verification.

In another three cases, suppliers had contracted with non-certified vendors for the disposal of hazardous waste material. Apple requires each facility to contact certified vendors for this task. They also must engage a third-party consultant and undergo a review of their systems for managing the waste.

In eight cases, agency recruiters had charged foreign workers excessive fees. An auditor investigated the hiring process and required the suppliers to reimburse the workers. The report said that in the past two years, workers have been reimbursed $2.2 million.

There were three cases of facilities providing falsified records, two which involved working hours and days of rest and one that involved the underage labor. Apple has terminated business with one of the facilities permanently but did not disclose which, or even what country it was based in. The assessment covered 102 facilities and 133,000 employees.

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Palm has managed to push out the webOS 1.4 update for some of its handset users. The update revolves greatly around the improvements in video recording functionality. It provides the Pre and Pixi with an iPhone-like interface for recording video and then carrying out trimming and simply tasks afterward.

Users can share their videos through Multimedia Messaging, YouTube, Facebook or by sending it through e-mail with the device. The update comes with support for Flash 10.1, making the Pre and Pixi the first handsets to fully support in-browser Flash videos and games, and other Flash-based content.

Some other features that are not as noticeable include a change that pulses the LED for notifications even if the phone is in "asleep" state, sorting e-mail by different criteria and better integration between calling and messaging features.

The update is available today for Sprint users, and also available to Movistar and O2 subscribers in Europe. Users of other services will have to wait a little while longer.

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Intel plans to release a faster version of its Atom N450 processor for use with Netbooks on Monday. The new N470 is almost identical to the N450 except that it has gotten a speed increase from 1.66GHz to 1.83GHz. The chip will feature fairly quickly in new netbook offerings from laptop makers, as the segment remains popular among consumers.

The Atom processors are built to be more energy efficient. The company uses a different architecture to achieve this goal, but the trade-off is lower performance. Netbooks generally sell for less than $350, which puts restraints on how much an Atom processor should cost manufacturers.

Intel is also reportedly on track to deliver a new "Moorestown" Atom chip targeted for use with smartphones and mobile Internet devices. The new chip is expected to be unveiled by Intel later this year. The company's manufacturing relationship with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is currently on hold according to a report in the New York Times.

The report cites a source familiar with the tie-up that explained that demand for the new chips (to feature in handheld devices) is just not strong enough at present.

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SanDisk has made upbeat comments on the near-future market for flash memory products. The U.S. flash-memory maker raised its revenue forecast for the first quarter, prompting a 2 percent rise in shares after a 2.2 percent rise in the regular session on the Nasdaq. It now forecasts its Q1 revenue to be between $925 million and $1 billion, up from $875 - $950 million.

SanDisk CFO Judy Bruner said the company is comfortable that 2010 revenue will be at the high-end of its $4 - $4.4 billion forecast. Chief Executive Eli Harari said he expects the growth in the industry for flash industry over the next decade to "dwarf" the growth of the previous ten years in the sector.

"What is different really over the next decade is that the scale of the business, I believe, the growth ahead is going to be on a bigger scale," Harari said at an investor meeting. He expects SanDisk to ship 1 billion units over the next two years. In the previous three years, SanDisk shipped 1 billion units.

SanDisk is the No.1 manufacturer of NAND flash memory cards used in devices like digital cameras. It rivals consumer electronics heavy-weights including Samsung Electronics, Toshiba Corp and Hynix Semiconductor.

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The gaming industry in China is continuing to enjoy rapid growth, spurred on by increasing numbers of Chinese citizens getting access to the Internet. In 2009, the industry earned 26 billion yuan, or about $3.8 billion, which was an increase of 39.5 percent over the previous year. Games developers overseas are looking at the market as a high priority investment.

However, it is the domestic game developers that will continue to get large pieces of the pie, according to experts. Games offered up by homegrown firms are more closely tailored to the tastes and preferences of Chinese people. "Foreign game developers are having a tough time competing in China," said Daniel H. Vlad, a senior analyst at JLM Pacific Epoch.

"So far only one Western game, World of Warcraft, has really succeeded in China. Chinese users spend significantly more time playing games than their Western counterparts. Foreign games typically fail to deliver enough content... Chinese gamers eventually lose interest and move on."

Opaque regulations and tight control over the Industry by the ruling Communist Party is the "biggest hurdle" for the growing industry, according to Lisa Cosmas Hanson, the founder of Niko Partners. Analysts predict that by 2012, the market will triple from its 2009 haul to about 73 billion yuan, with an estimated 270 million players in the country.

That will depend on the government taking no drastic action however, having previously expressed concerns about the trend and citing a survey that alleges 24 million young people (about half identified as gamers) are addicted to the web. Some gamers spend hour after hour in Internet cafes' engrossed in RPGs and other games.

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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has enabled SWF Verification for its catch-up Internet-video service. SWF Verification is effectively a content protection mechanism, in that its use can block out unauthorized software from accessing content. In this case, users of Open Source software (such as Xbox Media Center - or XBMC) can no longer access videos from BBC's iPlayer.

Adobe has effectively made it impossible for develops to create a fully-compatible open source Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) client. RTMP is used by Flash for streaming video, and it is publicly documented, but Adobe has guarded the RTMP content protection measures. SWF Verification is a security measure that can lock out an unauthorized client from multimedia content.

Content becomes accessible only by specific SWF files, and is controlled by the use of an authorization key. Fail to provide the authorization key and the video won't be retrieved. The principal intention of SWF Verification to guard against piracy (ripping videos) but regular honest users are once again caught in the crossfire.

It is possible to circumvent such a barrier, but Adobe has used DMCA takedown notices to shut down open source software projects that aim to do so.

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The UK's Digital Economy Bill (DEB) may have a negative effect on establishments that offer open Wi-Fi access to users. Libraries, Universities, Cafes and other small businesses will not be exempt from anti-piracy policies in the Digital Economy Bill, meaning that a small business offering WiFi might be warned and held responsible for copyright infringement of somebody using their WiFi access.

Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, said that the scenario as described by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) would effectively "outlaw open Wi-Fi for small businesses," while leaving the likes of Universities and public Libraries in an uncertain position.

"This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in," Edwards said. "Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small cafe."

Lord Young, a minister at BIS, responded to concerns in an explanatory document. He said libraries could not be exempted because it would send the wrong message and could lead to "fake" organizations being setup, claiming an exemption and acting as a hub for copyright infringement.

In the case of Universities, he said that since these establishments already have strict policies with regard to copyright infringement on their networks, it would not be sensible to force them to abandon their current system and replace it with an alternative; falling very far short of a reasonable explanation and clutching at straws for justification.

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U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl (D), chairman of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, has written a letter to NBC Chief Executive Jeff Zucker asking for an explanation of a Pay-TV link to Internet-based Winter Olympics videos. Kohl expressed concerns that certain content on the NBC site is only viewable by those who have Pay-TV subscriptions.

Kohl has a very valid concern in this case, because if NBC wanted to raise revenue from its coverage of the Vancouver events, it could simply charge users for premium online content. Instead, when users register to view the games' feeds, they are asked to verify themselves as a Cable TV, Satellite TV or IPTV service subscriber - in other words, a subscriber to services provided by a third party.

This raises enormous suspicions for a politician in Kohl's place, as Comcast/NBC Universal merger is looming. "I fear that this practice of locking up certain content only for pay-TV subscribers may be a preview of what is to come with respect to TV programing shown on the Internet, particularly in the context of the proposed Comcast/NBC Universal merger," Kohl wrote in the letter to NBC.

The possible merger between Comcast, which is a provider of cable television services, and NBC Universal which deals with the content side of the business, has been scrutinized in Congress and by consumer rights' groups, who fear that giving a cable operator control over content could have detrimental effects for consumers.

Under the proposed deal, Comcast plans to buy 51 percent of NBC Universal, now owned by General Electric. Kohl's concern about the NBCOlympics.com Pay-TV subscription requirement is that it may be linked to the merger and could be a taste of whats to come in the future for Internet video content.

NBC responded to the letter in an e-mail statement simply spelling out the financial burden that covering the Vancouver events is. "This three-part offering has been structured to provide the financial support to help justify that investment, and bring U.S. fans the high-quality, professionally produced content they demand," the company said in the statement.

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For those of us who regularly work with malware-infested machine as part of our jobs, rogue anti-malware software is absolutely nothing new. In Windows XP in particular, rogue software often portrays itself as Windows Security Center (while disabling the actual Security Center) to provide false warnings to users about (usually) non-existent virus and spyware infections.

Now, Microsoft has spotted a rogue piece of scareware that portrays itself as its Security Essentials suite (as have I on one laptop already), which is freely available to Windows users that have genuine software installed. As usual, the rogue anti-malware client lists a bunch of bullsh** infections before asking a user to pay a fee to purchase a "full" non-trial version of Security Essentials.

Here is what it looks like...


Click to Enlarge (Credit: Technet)

Microsoft Security Essentials is available as a free download for users of genuine software, but the phony "Security Essentials 2010" claims to unlock removal and cleaning functionality if the user will pay up. Actually filling out this information puts a user at risk of fraud (stolen credit card details) and of course, identity theft.


Click to Enlarge (Credit: Technet)

The malware also changes the users' Desktop background, alerting that "YOUR SYSTEM IS INFECTED". "System has been stopped due to a serious malfunction. Spyware activation has been detected." the background reads. "It is recommended to use spyware removal tool to prevent data loss. Do not use the computer before all spyware removed." Again, this should be a dead giveaway to anybody with a little bit of experience with security software or and an understanding of English.


Click to Enlarge (Credit: Technet)

The malware also blocks access to a number of popular video websites, which includes Facebook, eBay, YouTube, BBC News and more. Microsoft's real Security Essentials software detects the malware as Trojan:Win32/Fakeinit.

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