Netflix is a bandwidth hog. Who will pay? (Hint: You.)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Netflix is clogging up the Internet. There's a debate raging about who should pay for it -- but ultimately, it's going to be you.

The latest skirmish is a fracas between Comcast, which connects users to the Internet, and Level 3, which signed a deal three weeks ago to host and deliver Netflix's streaming videos to networks like Comcast's. Comcast ultimately delivers those videos to its paying broadband customers.

Here's the quick blow-by-blow:

After Level 3 (LVLT) inked the deal, it went to Comcast and asked permission to send twice the amount of traffic to the cable and Internet provider's network as it had done before. The data spike isn't surprising: Netflix represents more than 20% of download traffic during peak hours, according to a new study by Sandvine.

Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500) scoffed. That's a whole lot of bandwidth that Level 3 is asking for, and it's expensive for Comcast to constantly beef up its network to support additional traffic.

Typically, content delivery networks (CDNs) like Level 3 have what's called "peering" agreements with Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast. The two sides figure that a roughly equal amount of traffic will be driven to each of their networks, so neither charges the other a fee for use.

But Comcast says that with the new Netflix load, Level 3's traffic to Comcast's network would be five times more than the cable company is driving to Level 3's network. So Comcast demanded that Level 3 pay for that traffic increase.

"Level 3 wants to compete with other CDNs, but pass all the costs of that business onto Comcast and Comcast's customers, instead of Level 3 and its customers," Comcast said in a blog post.

In response, Level 3 lashed out at Comcast. It called the new fee unfair and accused Comcast of abusing its "dominant" position as the nation's largest cable provider.

"By taking this action, Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network," Level 3 said in a press release.

Still, it says it grudgingly agreed last week to pay up. "After being informed by Comcast that its demand for payment was 'take it or leave it,' Level 3 agreed to the terms, under protest, in order to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions," the company said.

Somebody's gotta pay

The explosion of online video -- especially the movie-length content Netflix (NFLX) spotlights -- isn't an easy problem to fix. The amount of video watched online has nearly doubled in a year, to 15.1 hours per user per month, according to comScore. It is costs increasingly more to host and serve that content, and to build the infrastructure for the bandwidth that allows users to download it.

Someone has to pay for that. But who should it be?

0:00 /5:04Netflix: DVDs dead, streaming lives

That's where it gets sticky: Both Comcast and Level 3 are playing on both sides of the fence.

In addition to being one of the world's largest CDNs, Level 3 is also a so-called "tier 1" Internet backbone. It's one of around a dozen companies that provides major routes for data to flow between networks like Comcast and content networks (including its own) that host websites and videos.

Level 3 squawked loudly about Comcast's fee demand, calling it a "clear abuse" of Comcast's market position and an act that "threatens the open Internet."

Yet Level 3 found itself in Comcast's shoes back in 2005. Feeling its peering agreement with fellow Internet backbone Cogent Communications (CCOI) unfairly taxed its network, Level 3 made the exact same argument that Comcast is making today, and even temporarily pulled the plug on its connection to Cogent, cutting off some parts of the Internet for millions of Cogent customers.

Comcast is also playing on both sides of the argument, since it is a competitor to Netflix. It owns several cable channels and is in the process of buying NBC Universal.

Level 3 played up that conflict-of-interest. "With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast's subscribers at all, unless Comcast's unilaterally determined toll is paid," the company said.

Comcast denied that its role as a content provider has anything to do with its decision to charge Level 3 a fee.

'A series of tubes'

To make some sense of this, we can pay tribute to the late Sen. Ted Stevens, who famously called the Internet "a series of tubes." It's not, but it's actually a pretty good analogy.

Picture the Internet as a city. Level 3 operates the massive plumbing pipes under the roadways, but it also runs the mechanism that collects and pushes the water through. Comcast is the company that connects your home plumbing system to those massive water pipes -- but it also makes some of the water.

Kind of complicated, right? So the debate isn't as clean-cut as it would appear.

Even Net neutrality advocates are backing away from the strong language they had initially used in shunning Comcast.

"The Net neutrality argument isn't saying that everything should be free -- someone needs to pay for all the infrastructure that provides that traffic," said Matt Wood, associate director of Media Access Project, an advocacy group that wants regulators to mandate "open Internet" policies.

"Netflix will have to raise its costs, because Level 3 has to raise costs to carry Netflix, and Comcast has to raise its costs to increase its bandwidth," he said. "But ultimately, that means the customers will pay for it."

It's possible that Comcast is singling out Level 3 because it serves content from one of its chief competitors. It's also possible that Level 3 is being duplicitous by changing its argument when it's on the other side of the fence.

But cutting through all the bickering, one harsh reality is becoming clear: Everyone's going to have to pay. Comcast will have to raise its fees and Level 3 will have to pay more for its traffic demands. Those fees will be borne by Netflix and Comcast -- and ultimately, they'll be passed onto you.

Kinect Sex: Coming Soon to a Console Near You?

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iObserver Apple Pulls Anti-Gay App from App Store

Apple has pulled an app from the App Store that espoused an anti-gay and anti-abortion agenda called Manhattan Declaration from a group with the same name. The app had been approved and given a 4+ age rating, a rating that means the app contains “no objectionable material,” but Apple pulled the app over the Thanksgiving weekend after PinkNews got more than seven thousand signatures asking for the app to be pulled.

According to reports, the app presented The Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto put together by conservative Catholic and fundamentalist Christian groups against both abortion rights and gay marriage, in full. The app also included a four questions presented as a survey asking about the user’s opinions on the two subjects, but anyone filling out the survey was then given a score based on whether their answers matched the group’s agenda. In addition, the app also asked people to sign on to the declaration.

Surprisingly, Apple actually commented on this app removal, telling PC Magazine in a statement, “We removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”

For its part, The Manhattan Declaration is “deeply perplexed” as to how Apple could find its app objectionable. In a blog post, it said that, “We are urging Apple to restore the App, and have written to Steve Jobs. We will update you with developments as they arise.”

The image below of a broken iPhone with a screen shot of the now-pulled app was taken from the group’s home page:

The Manhattan Declaration Protests Apple’s App Decision

Apple hasn’t often been publicly active in the political spectrum, but in 2008 the company did give US$100,000 to fight the now infamous Prop 8 measure in California that rewrote the state’s constitution to outlaw gay marriage. At that time, Apple said in a statement:

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

All of this serves to illustrate the tightrope that Apple will constantly have to walk after setting itself up as the arbiter for what can and can not be offered on the App Store. In this case, anti-gay and anti-choice people will be angry the app was pulled, while gay rights and pro-choice users were angry the app was ever approved.

Fed up with ICANN, Pirate Bay cofounder floats P2P DNS system

By Iljitsch van Beijnum

Peter Sunde of Pirate Bay fame has had it with ICANN. Now that the US government is ordering the Internet governance body to remove domain names of copyright infringers from the global DNS, Sunde has sounded a call to arms to create a new Domain Name System to help pirates remain masters of their domain. The new DNS would forego a centralized root—too attractive a target for meddling governments—and use peer-to-peer technology instead.

In recent years, the Pirate Bay has successfully applied this strategy by turning off its widely used BitTorrent tracker. With BitTorrent, users share files directly between them, without the need to store the file on a central server. Hence the term peer-to-peer. However, the coordination of who downloads what from whom was originally still a function performed by a central server. Eventually, the Pirate Bay started to see their tracker that coordinated millions of (mostly) illegal downloads every day as a liability. So they got rid of it, telling people to use a peer-to-peer system to coordinate the downloads, too. This of course rendered useless all old BitTorrent client applications that didn't support the new Dynamic Hash Tables (DHT) mechanism. But the need to download is a strong one, so people upgraded or moved to other trackers that are still in operation.

If executed successfully, the effort to create a peer-to-peer based DNS would be a boon for websites hosting content off-shore that is illegal in countries that have influence over ICANN—most notably, the US. This includes sites that may or may not be considered to facilitate illegal downloading, such as torrent search engines, but also sites that host illegal content themselves. And Wikileaks could conceivably find itself included in the crosshairs of the US government.

There are a number of obstacles standing in the way of P2P DNS. First of all, today Google has a huge array of enormous DNS servers to serve up all the *.google.* domains, while I have an aging Pentium 4 box running DNS and mail for just me. In a new system, people looking for Google may hit my server—as well as the other way around, of course. So I'll have to invest in a bigger server. With a peer-to-peer system, people also have to depend on the kindness of strangers: random people around the Net have to send people in your direction. This is hard to make secure, and it's much slower than the existing DNS.

But the biggest problem of all is the ownership of domain names. In a DHT, information is found through hashes of the desired object. With file sharing, this is a hash over the file to be shared. If two people want to share the same file, you actually want to find them both, and download pieces from both of them—that way, the download goes faster. But with the DNS, things work much better if a domain name only maps to a single destination. On a brainstorm page, some solutions are discussed. One idea is an Internet Relay Chat-like fix, where it's necessary to hold on to a domain name like holding on to a name and operator rights on the distributed chat network.

Today, ICANN and the TLDs decide who gets which domain. The Pirate Bay proposes to replace them with an algorithm, one that would reside in the P2P DNS software. The stakes are high: even a small fraction of the traffic of a popular site, or even just an interesting search term, can be worth a lot of money. It's hard to imagine that with such high stakes there wouldn't be any abuse of such an open system, or at the very least, widely diverging points of view of what's best.

There have been many—be it non-peer-to-peer—alternative/complimentary DNS hierarchies in the past, going back to 1995-1997 with AlterNIC. None of them ever gained mainstream acceptance, even though anyone can easily point their DNS settings towards the alternate nameservers without losing compatibility with the regular DNS.

Dozer Driver Makes Fossil Discovery of the Century

Wikipedia / Sergiodlarosa

An artist's reconstruction of columbi sergiodlarosa -- a Columbian Mammoth.

An accidental discovery by a bulldozer driver has led to what may be the find of the century: an ice-age burial ground that could rival the famed La Brear tar pits.

After two weeks of excavating ancient fossils at the Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado, scientists from the Denver Museum of Natural Science returned home Wednesday with their unearthed treasures in tow -- a wide array of fossils, insects and plant life that they say give a stunningly realistic view of what life was like when ancient, giant beasts lumbered across the Earth.

Since the team’s arrival in mid-October, scientists have extracted nearly 600 bones from about 20 different animals from the Pleistocene era, a period of time during the Ice Age. The remains of up to six different species have been exhumed, including five American mastodons, three Ice Age bison, a Jefferson’s ground sloth, a mule deer, a tiger salamander, and two Columbian mammoths.

"One of the many things that is so great is the potential of the site," Ian Miller, curator of paleontology for the Denver Museum and a leading scientist for the dig, told FoxNews.com. "This could be just as important as sites like the La Brea Tar Pits and be in the top five sites in North America."

Thanks to those and other finds, the Snowmass Village Fossil Excavation has been deemed a "smashing success" by all those involved, which included up to 70 museum volunteers and staff. Paleontologists in Denver have already started planning for when they can go back.

And it's all due to a construction project by the Snowmass Water and Sanitation department.

The sleepy ski village was created in 1965 when the Ziegler family built the Reservoir that carries its name. The Aspen Daily News described it as a sparkling little lake that partially filled a shallow bowl of earth, surrounded by low hills covered in scrub oak and aspen trees.

An ancient glacial lake once sat in the same location -- a lake that filled in with clay, peat and silt as the glaciers retreated from Colorado. When the sanitation department moved to dig out the reservoir on Oct. 14, the ancient mammals that lived there nearly 13,000 years earlier made a fresh appearance, preserved by the combination of mud and peat.

The idea to dig at Snowmass was sparked after a bulldozer driver stumbled upon what he believed to be the remains of a mammoth in the small town’s reservoir. The driver contacted the Denver Museum of Natural

Science about his discovery, and the museum immediately sent up a team to investigate, uncovering a hidden trove of prehistoric remnants unlike any other.

The site rivals many others in terms of its diversity, as it is the only known place in Colorado -- and one of few in North America -- that contains both mammoth and mastodon fossils in the same location. And just finding an American mastodon is pretty unusual in itself.

"There are only three known records of mastodons in Colorado, and we have found at least five specimens," Miller said. "So throughout the course of 120 years of paleontology, we jumped from three mastodons to eight in a single two-week period."

And the significance of the Snowmass Excavation doesn’t stop there. Snowmass has also produced an array of insect and plant life, as well as wood that has been chewed by beavers, essentially producing what Miller calls a "window into an Ice Age ecosystem."

The uniqueness of the Snowmass site stems from its location. The Ziegler Reservoir stands at the top of a ridge at an elevation that is higher than most excavation sites. The reservoir was soon revealed to be a glacial lake that had filled over, allowing the fossils inside to survive erosion for more than 40,000 years.

"We’ve got a lot of records at low elevation where sediment accumulates and where fossils are better preserved," Miller told FoxNews.com. "But you really don’t get things like lakes preserved at high elevations for long periods of time," said Miller. "So this site is really going to help us answer questions about how high elevation floras and faunas reacted to Pleistocene climate change."

Now that the team has returned to the museum with their findings, they are working to safely preserve the fossils before they revisit the site in May. And the team at the Denver Museum of Natural Science couldn’t be more eager to return.

"It’s been a dream come true," Miller said. "For a paleontologist, you can’t hope for anything more. It’s so exciting to be on site, finding new stuff every day, especially things we never expected to find in Colorado. It was just so incredible."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/20/snowmass-inside-greatest-discovery-century/#ixzz15we9aZXi

'Watchmen' Video from Gelfbury

Freakin hilarious. These guys are talented. The videos just get funnier and funnier.

Part 1



Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Finale

'Alan Wake' Video from Gelfbury

The Battle For StarCraft II

courtesy of Edge

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Not at all. Blizzard’s long-anticipated launch of StarCraft II was meant to be a dream – a triumphant return to the RTS genre that made the company’s name in 1997, when the first StarCraft revolutionised realtime strategy gaming. The centrepiece of the game’s launch? South Korea, the epicentre of world competitive gaming, where the low-specs original spread like a virus, hopping from the gamer fringe to become a mainstream sport within five years. Of the ten-million-plus copies of the original game sold worldwide, half were in South Korea. Two television channels sprang up to broadcast matches between the 12 Proleague teams, and fans flocked to see elite players face off against their rivals. The best players pulled in big money, earning up to £200,000 a year.

It’s no wonder that Blizzard looked to South Korea as the land of opportunity for the sequel. With so many players and fans still playing the original, with dedicated television channels running constant promotion, with an entire sport evolving from a single game, what could possibly go wrong?



Plenty, as it turns out. When Blizzard made the original StarCraft way back in 1998, in the early bloom of gaming as a massive entertainment industry, the company had no way of predicting the success of the game in Korea. The blossoming of the e-Sports industry there, spearheaded by StarCraft, took place in an ad-hoc, unregulated manner, and not a single dollar was paid to Blizzard by any of the Korean entities which grew up around the StarCraft phenomenon.

This time around, things have changed. Vivendi took part control of Blizzard in 2008 through its majority-owned company Activision, and a new, more commerce-focused slant became apparent despite Blizzard’s relative independence. Now there would be no chance that an entire sport would spring up unauthorised. This time, Blizzard was going to take control of its own intellectual property and control what was done with it. Stung by the experience of battling World Of Warcraft bots, task automators and gold farmers, the company took a hardline stance against KeSPA – the Korean e-Sports Players Association – and the two TV channels, MBC Game and OnGameNet.



In an open letter on May 27 – two months before the full release – Blizzard president Mike Morhaime laid it out in the open: “In 2007, we were shocked and disappointed to learn that KeSPA had illegally sold the broadcasting rights for StarCraft tournaments without our consent. With this clear violation of our intellectual property rights, we were forced to become more actively involved in the situation and make our voice be heard.”

Strong words indeed. Morhaime wrote that his company had tried hard to negotiate with KeSPA – which has the backing of the Korean government, the teams, and the TV channels – but had got nowhere, effectively forcing Blizzard to ditch KeSPA and give exclusive broadcast rights to SCII matches to a minnow of an operation, Gom TV. The announcement sent shockwaves through the Korean e-Sports establishment, and rippled out into the English-speaking world. To fend off the perception of a money-grab, Morhaime tackled the issue head on: “Unlike the negative rumours you might have heard, Blizzard’s intention towards e-Sports is not to ‘dominate’ it and create excessive profits from it. From the beginning of the negotiations up to now, the basic framework we have thought of is one where e-Sports can continue to grow, while we can protect our intellectual property rights.”

Why is Blizzard getting so hardline about broadcasting rights? After all, the 12 pro-gaming teams are sponsored by major Korean companies who regard the sport simply as a way to get young people interested in their brands. There’s no real money in broadcasting StarCraft – the large audience is nearly all teenage or in its early 20s, a group that in Korea does not have much disposal income, and attending a StarCraft stadium match costs nothing. As Jae-Gyoon Yi, one of the founders of professional StarCraft and the coach of the Woongjin Stars team, told us, when a company sponsors a pro-gaming team, it’s simply another marketing avenue for product exposure.

“In ten years, fans might choose their products instead of the competitors’. They will remember the name,” he says. A team costs up to £14m per year to run – small beer for a long-term branding operation. But the massive corporations will only stay loyal to their teams if fans keep coming to matches and watching them on TV. This battle over intellectual rights may in fact damage the very industry which Blizzard wants to run.

As Korean StarCraft commentator Milkis says, this offline battle is all about control. “Blizzard wanted a lot of control – ownership of pretty much everything – which KeSPA refused to give. The actual negotiations had little to do with money, but more about how much control each party has.”



Control seems to be increasingly important to Blizzard, as evidenced by its refusal to include the LAN play functionality which made the first game such a favourite. To play StarCraft II competitively at all, you have to go through the shinier but more restrictive Battle.net, without chatrooms and restricted to playing within the single region in which you purchased the game. Dig a little bit into Battle.net’s terms of use and you’ll find that it is forbidden to “use the Service for any ‘e-Sports’ or group competition sponsored, promoted or facilitated by any commercial or non-profit entity without Blizzard’s prior written consent”. In short, the unauthorised Korean scene is hereby put on notice: stop using Blizzard’s intellectual property, or be prepared to cough up for the privilege.

Blizzard’s hardball approach has left Koreans feeling sore. A KeSPA spokesman told us that he felt the Korean industry had effectively created the StarCraft phenomenon. In part, that’s true – the region’s fascination with all things Zerg, Terran and Protoss did wonders for Blizzard’s bottom line when it was a smaller company than it is today, and countless thousands more copies were sold once the big-name stars emerged on television.

“Our position is that we created the competitions. Korea is the home of StarCraft – it’s very big here. There are still lots of people playing an old game, but now I think Blizzard wants it to be here without KeSPA,” says the spokesman. “Blizzard wants Battle.net to be used in competitions, not LAN. And they want more money.”



Cutting out the old players seemed like a smart move for Blizzard as it prepared to launch a game it felt certain would update and refine its 1998 offering, guaranteeing years more pro-gaming. As critics began lining up to praise the slick graphics, refined gameplay and new tactics, surely no one would mind if it omitted LAN play – forcing all game traffic through Battle.net – and introduced regional licences for the game? Surely the devoted Korean fans wouldn’t mind if a new, more amenable player picked up the rights to broadcast competitions on television?

It seems, however, that Blizzard may have guessed wrong. In Korea, StarCraft II hasn’t bombed – but it hasn’t done as well as its maker was expecting. There’s been a 12-year gap between game instalments, and many players have either outgrown games or moved on to more novel pastures. StarCraft II is an updated StarCraft, not an entirely new game. Eager to ensure Koreans ditched their beloved original StarCraft for the revamped version, Blizzard offered the game to Korean WOW gamers for free.

Even so, the numbers playing in PC baangs (net cafes) have been lower than expected, with only two to three per cent of Korean gamers playing SCII in the month after it was released. It’s a tiny number given that Korea is perceived as StarCraft’s home market, that the game was released in time for the school holidays, and that it launched with a $30m ad campaign. In fact, StarCraft II’s three-million-plus sales have been mainly in the west.

But after months of tense negotiations, the future may be shifting Blizzard’s way once more. In recent weeks, one of the two main StarCraft: Brood War league organisers, MBC, has reluctantly made overtures to Gom TV for the rights to broadcast. It means that KeSPA – which is supposed to represent the entire e-Sports industry – is losing its grip. Since Gom TV owns the Korean rights to broadcast StarCraft II and the original game, Blizzard effectively has KeSPA, and Gom’s rival TV channels, over a barrel. Gom TV gave the two established StarCraft leagues until the end of August to finish their now-illegal matches. Since then, however, negotiations have been going badly.


Blizzard president Mike Morhaime at the TG-Intel STARCRAFT II Open Season1 tournament

“It’s hard to look at the one-sided and coercive demands as negotiations,” a KeSPA source said in late September. The pro team KT, which was involved in the negotiations, went further. “We once again confirmed that [Gom owner] Gretech does not have any desire to negotiate as they deny the existence of pro-game teams and the Proleague,” said its spokesman.

Despite – or perhaps because of – the pitched battle over broadcast rights, Korean pro-gamers are beginning to make the switch to StarCraft II. Jaedong, widely considered the best Zerg player in the original StarCraft at present, now says he will move over to StarCraft II. “I will definitely switch as I feel StarCraft II has a higher status than StarCraft: Brood War,” he told a Chinese game blog. “We will see more international tournaments in SCII compared to StarCraft: Brood War and this will make the change natural for me. I want to build my reputation abroad and reach out to the international audience.”

For pro-gamers, the case for switching between two similar games was given a boost by April’s match-fixing scandal, which engulfed some of the original StarCraft’s most highly paid players, including the legendary Zerg player sAviOr. Many players were forced to quietly resign or stay out of the limelight, while disgusted fans began abandoning the game, speeding up an existing trend away from StarCraft towards newer, Korean-made titles. As Milkis notes, Korean e-Sports has been shrinking recently: “People are growing up, getting into different kinds of games, and events like this [the Blizzard crackdown] and match fixing are drawing people away from the game.”



For now, Blizzard is pinning its hopes on StarCraft II pro-gaming taking off worldwide, rather than remaining in the Korean ghetto of ultra-high actions-per-minute and ten-hour-day practice sessions. To that end, Gom TV put on an open tournament in Seoul in early October, with prize money totalling £315,000. Despite being open to players from around the world, the tournament was largely Korean, and the Korean Zerg player FruitDealer sent in the Ultralisks to ensure ultimate victory.

He was one of the earliest pro-gamers to make the switch to StarCraft II, after he was forced to leave the original StarCraft scene and his team, eSTRO, to deal with a family emergency. Returning, he picked up the new game and proved himself the current master, pocketing £53,000. With his historic win, FruitDealer has staked a firm claim that Korean StarCraft gamers are still the world’s best. It’s a promising sign for Blizzard and Gom TV, but the future is not certain. We won’t know for some time if Blizzard’s tough tactics have damaged the StarCraft phenomenon in Korea beyond repair, or if it all merely boils down to transitional road bumps

Blizzard Offering A Week Of Free Time To Warcraft Apostates

Backsliders in the church of Warcraft are being coaxed back to the flock with an offer of seven free days of gameplay, to whet their appetite for the Cataclysm expansion due in December.

Notices are going out to lapsed subscribers now; they promise a week of game time, but the offer expires Dec. 1. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the MMO's third expansion, releases Dec. 7.

If you've let your account go on hiatus, check your inbox, trash folder or spam filter. It's a free seven days of MMO time. Provided you can say no thanks after it's all over.

Most Accurate Review of 'Call of Duty: Black Ops'

Single Player Review

PC Games - E3 2011 - Call of Duty: Black Ops

Multiplayer Review

DS Games - E3 2011 - Call of Duty: Black Ops

Why You'll Give Up Gmail for Facebook Mail

According to Techcrunch's sources, a full webmail client integrated with The One and Only Social Network will debut next Monday. This is why it may become your favorite webmail service.

If I were Google, Yahoo or Hotmail, I'd be very nervous. Facebook Mail could be a killer not only because of its potential instant size, but because of its natural advantage at making mail more useful.

That's the important thing for Facebook users and everyone else. This may become the only 100% useful mail service out there, only showing you the emails you are actually interested in. To me, if they have the right user interface, that's enough reason to switch from Gmail.

Why use Facebook for email?

Facebook has 500 million active users. Gmail is estimated at 170 million registered users, while Yahoo has 303 million and Hotmail is still king of the hill at 364 million. Of course, not every Facebook boy and girl will jump on its mail bandwagon, but chances are that a huge percentage of you will. In fact, it's not a crazy assumption that almost everyone will, even if that means having yet another mail account added to your computer, phone or tablet.

The fact is that it may be just too convenient to ignore. Facebook users are already used to its internal messaging system. For many, this will be a nice upgrade that will let them add these messages to their mail boxes. Remember that Facebook's mail is rumored to have external mail client access as well as its dedicated webmail interface. It will be easy to have it in every single gadget you own.

But, most importantly, Facebook's users would probably jump in because the social nature of Facebook fits perfectly with the social nature of mail. The irony here is that their mail system could be a raging success because of what many people criticize: Facebook tracks all your moves.

Your playground

Since Facebook knows how you interact with all your contacts, they would be able to perfectly separate what is important from what is not. Having used Gmail's Priority Inbox for a while, I have the feeling that Facebook could do much better at given all their data and some clever, but not overly complicated logic.

Moreover, it's not only about separating what is important and what is not. Their data tracking and analysis could allow them to do many other things. For example, they just have to analyze who is tagging you in photos, who is with you in those photos, to know who are your real friends, and categorize mail accordingly. They can automatically classify mail from the person who just became your fiance or lower the priority of that ex who keeps mailing you. The possibilities of using your social interactions to enhance the mail experience are endless. I have no doubt that Facebook will exploit this information to your advantage—and theirs, I'm afraid.

Ultimately, that's what people—especially younger generations—like about Facebook. It's always prioritized communication, a closed playground where only your friends and contacts get to interact with you. If they can provide a mail system that will allow the controlled entry of external people while keeping the playground fun, clean, and safe, they'll have a winner.

Armed Robbers Snatch 100 Copies Of Black Ops In GameStop Heist

Two guys with semiautomatic firearms were hellbent on breaking street for Call of Duty: Black Ops, sticking up a Baltimore-area GameStop and looting it of 100 copies of the game, due out Tuesday.

The Harford County, Md. sheriff's office said the heist happened Saturday evening, and the robbers waited until closing time to hold up the GameStop in the Festival at Bel Air shopping center in Bel Air, about 30 miles northeast of Baltimore.

Deputies said two customers stopped by the store mid-robbery and were forced at gunpoint into a storage area. Neither they nor employees were hurt. The robbers might also be behind an Oct. 21 holdup at GameStop's nearby Aberdeen, Md. location.

A sheriff's office spokesman asked locals to call them if they're offered a copy of the game before Tuesday's release date. A quick scour of Craigslist in that area turned up no such offers.

Harford robbers steal more than 100 ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops' video games [Baltimore Sun via Hot Blooded Gaming

A Look At The Old Republic's Player-Versus-Player Warzones

Republic and Imperial forces clash on the world of Alderaan over control of the planet's massive planetary defense cannon in this first detailed look at organized player-versus-player in BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic.

We've seen plenty of cooperative multiplayer footage from The Old Republic, but the core of the story is the conflict between the Republic and Imperial forces, and that conflict comes to a head in the game's PVP Warzones.

Warzones are objective-based arena battlegrounds where both sides struggle to complete goals and win a particular scenario. In the case of Alderaan, the two forces struggle to take control of a weapon capable of wiping out an enemy fleet. Players attempt to deplete the shields of their enemies' transport ship, forcing a retreat. Teams need to work together to control the defense system's artillery in order to get the job done and emerge victorious.

Bioware will reveal more about the Warzone experience in the near future. For now, study this video and start formulating strategies.

Warzone Video [Knights of the Old Republic]

Kinect has problems recognizing dark-skinned users?

Source: In testing the Kinect, two dark-skinned GameSpot employees had problems getting the system's facial recognition features to work.

What we heard: Part of Microsoft's $500 million marketing push for Kinect includes positioning it as an accessible entertainment device for all audiences. However, it may be more accessible to some than others.

While testing out the Kinect, two dark-skinned GameSpot employees experienced problems with the system's facial recognition abilities. The system recognized one employee inconsistently, while it was never able to properly identify the other despite repeated calibration attempts. However, Kinect had no problems identifying a third dark-skinned GameSpot employee, recognizing his face after a single calibration. Lighter-skinned employees were also consistently picked up on the first try.

Not all games make much use of Kinect's facial recognition features.

It's important to note that the problems were only experienced with the system's facial recognition feature and don't prevent users from playing Kinect games. Skeletal tracking, a primary means of controlling games with Kinect, appeared to work the same for all GameSpot employees.

The system's inability to recognize a user only means that he or she would need to sign in manually and some games' features may not work properly as a result. For example, when a second player joins in to Kinect Adventures during the title's drop-in, drop-out multiplayer, the system can't bring up that player's proper in-game avatar automatically if it can't identify the new user first.

If Kinect does have some technical issues related to users' pigmentation, it wouldn't be a first for recognition technology. Last holiday season, users of Hewlett-Packard computers with built-in webcams reported problems with a face-tracking feature.

HP blamed the problem on the webcam's technology, "standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose." It said the system could have problems "seeing" that contrast if there is insufficient foreground lighting.

[UPDATE 11/4] GameSpot continued its testing of Kinect today with more users in different rooms and different clothing. At first, the two employees who originally would not be recognized by the camera were correctly identified on the first try. However, when one changed from a light blue shirt to a black shirt (but stayed in the same room with the same lighting), the camera again failed to recognize him after multiple calibration tests. It also failed to recognize another darker-skinned GameSpot employee after four calibration attempts.

Somehow, those issues may not completely undermine the camera's ability to use facial recognition features. Despite the Xbox 360's insistence that it could not recognize some of the GameSpot employees immediately after calibration, the system was able to recognize them and sign them in properly when they waved at the camera, regardless of their clothing.

The official story: "The goal of Kinect is to break down the barriers for everyone to play, and it will work with people of all shapes and ethnicities at launch."--A Microsoft representative, who added that Kinect owners having calibration or recognition problems can call 1-800-4-MY-XBOX.

[UPDATE 2]: After the additional testing, Microsoft provided further comment, saying, "Kinect works with people of all skin tones. And just like a camera, optimal lighting is best. Anyone experiencing issues with facial recognition should adjust their lighting settings, as instructed in the Kinect Tuner."

Bogus or not bogus: Not bogus that Kinect has problems identifying some users. Abstain on how widespread those problems are, or whether they're due to skin color at all. With the system launching tonight and Microsoft expecting to sell 5 million by year's end, it shouldn't be long before the scope and cause of such problems are identified.

Dragon Age Legends to be recounted on Facebook

Though Dragon Age is firmly ensconced in a medieval fantasy world, the series is in some ways more forward looking than BioWare's futuristic sci-fi role-playing game series, Mass Effect. Last year, the Electronic Arts-owned developer used Dragon Age to explore browser-based gaming with the Dragon Age Journeys spin-off. Next February, the swords-and-sorcery series will expand into more uncharted territory with a new Facebook game called Dragon Age Legends.

Not even Farmville features a world this grim and bloody.

Although Dragon Age was rated M for Mature on account of "intense violence" and "sexual content," EA is developing Legends for "Facebook users of all ages." The game will also be built around casual and social play styles commonly seen on the networking site. Players will enlist the aid of their Facebook friends to work through a storyline's worth of quests, upgrade characters, build their kingdoms, and earn exclusive unlockable items for use in Dragon Age II, which launches March 8.

While BioWare may be new to the world of Facebook gaming, EA has considerable expertise in the subject, thanks to its $275 million acquisition of Playfish last year. Playfish is best known for running Facebook hits like Pet Society, Restaurant City, and Country Story.

In other EA-Facebook news, the publisher has announced a five-year exclusive deal with the social network to streamline the microtransaction experience for customers playing EA games. As part of the deal, EA games on Facebook will only use Facebook Credits as their virtual currency of choice.

EA Announces Battlefield Play4Free

EA is launching another Battlefield-themed play-for-free service, however this one has a hard-core tone.

Friday Electronic Arts updated its Battlefield franchise portfolio with the announcement of Battlefield Play4Free, slated to hit the PC in Spring 2011. As the name indicates, the game will offer the free-to-play model while combining most of the popular maps found in Battlefield 2 with the classes and weapons of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

But unlike EA's other free-to-play online

shooter Battlefield Heroes--which offers cartoonish characters and arcade gameplay--Battlefield Play4Free will render a more realistic experience offering 32-player online battles, signature Battlefield vehicular warfare and sandbox gameplay. The game also boasts advanced graphics and polished production values.

"We broke new ground in 2009 with the launch of Battlefield Heroes; a game that has 6M registered players worldwide. Now we are complementing that arcade shooter with a core, realistic Battlefield shooter experience that fans have been clamoring for," said James Salt, Senior Producer, Battlefield Play4Free. "Battlefield Play4Free is for serious shooter fans who are looking for a premium--but free--experience that rivals top console titles."

According to EA, players will learn new combat skills and earn in-game money to spend on weapons and equipment. They'll also have access to 16 vehicles including the Mil Mi-28 attack helicopter, the F35 VTOL jet fighter, the Russian T-90 main battle tank, and the LSV light strike vehicle.

Those who want to gain early access can register for the closed beta by heading to the official site. The closed beta officially launches on November 30, just in time for the holiday break.

Battlefield Play4Free

FBI watching Oracle-SAP trial

IDG News Service - An FBI agent has been in the courtroom each day this week watching the Oracle-SAP trial, suggesting U.S. law enforcement continues to take an interest in the case.

SAP said in 2007, when Oracle filed its civil lawsuit against the company, that the Department of Justice had requested documents related to the matter from SAP and its TomorrowNow subsidiary. SAP said at the time that it would "fully cooperate."

In a court filing in August, SAP said there was an "ongoing investigation" by the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into "some facts and circumstances that are involved in this matter."

Oracle originally filed 10 complaints against SAP, including copyright infringement, violation of the federal computer fraud and abuse act, breach of contract and unfair competition. It agreed to pursue only the copyright claim at trial after SAP accepted some liability.

It's not unusual for representatives from the DOJ or the FBI to listen in at civil proceedings to learn more about a case or help them determine if they wish to file criminal charges.

"We have an interest in the case," the FBI agent said in court Thursday. He declined to comment further or provide his name. A spokesman with the FBI office in San Francisco would not confirm or deny it is watching the case.

Kyle Waldinger, an assistant U.S. attorney in San Francisco, was also in court observing the case this week, Bloomberg reported.

SAP spokesman Bill Wohl declined to comment beyond reiterating that his company would cooperate with any requests. A spokeswoman for Oracle declined to comment.

SAP has admitted that its now-closed TomorrowNow subsidiary stole support materials from an Oracle website, and the trial is to determine how much damages SAP should pay.

Charles Phillips, a former Oracle president, testified for Oracle in the case this week, and Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison is due to take the stand Monday. SAP will begin to present its defense in about 10 days, and the trial is expected to wrap up before the end of the month.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Your questions answered

With only a few days left until the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops we sat down and answered all of your most frequently asked questions.

Here they are.

Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer was so nearly ruined by its insane number of unbalanced killstreaks and perks. What steps are Treyarch taking to ensure history doesn't repeat itself?

The most important change is that killstreak kills no longer count towards your killstreak total.

That's a lot of 'kills' in one sentence, but the gist is that if you require seven kills to unlock an attack helicopter, you'll need to rack them up on the field.

There are plenty of perks both new and old, we notice. Any key omissions this time?

Yup - perks which alter the player's statistics, such as 'Stopping Power' and 'Painkiller', have gone out the window.

Let's draft in Multiplayer designer David Vonderhaar to explain: "We want our players to fight on an even keel as much as possible.

We don't want newcomers coming away from the game wondering why the enemy can withstand more hits than they can."

Interrrrrrresting. So they're pushing Black Ops as a 'My First Multiplayer' experience, are they?

That's right. Activision's research bods have deduced that as many as 40% of people who bought Modern Warfare 2 have never even touched its online components.

In Activision's eyes, that's a hell of a lot of players who could be splashing out on slightly overpriced DLC, but aren't.

That's why they've cooked up a new offline mode designed to steer them online: Combat Training.

Combat training? Just a wild guess, but is that Deathmatch with 'bots?

DING! That's exactly what it is. Treyarch believe that the reason many fail to enlist online is because they find the idea a wee bit intimidating.

With Combat Training, lily-livered soldiers can experience the entire glorious multiplayer package in a 'safe' online environment.

Is there any point playing Combat Training if you're an experienced answerer to the Call of Duty?

We shouldn't think so. Although it shares the same levelling-up system as the multiplayer game, the XP earned in Combat Training doesn't transfer over to multiplayer, meaning you can't grind away at it to gain an advantage online.

It also doesn't look like the 'bots will put up much of a challenge from what we've seen, but there will be three levels of difficulty to choose from, so we shall just have to see.

Right. Now tell me all about this new 'CoD Points' currency, and how it works alongside the existing XP system...

That's more of a demand than a question, but we'll answer anyway, as there's been a bit of confusion about it all.

XP still unlocks new weapons, perks and attachments as before, but you now have to manually purchase each item with your CoD Points (CP) before they become available for selection.

That sounds like a bit of an itchy ball-ache. Why do you have to do that then?

It allows Treyarch to fit a lot more content into the game than they otherwise might - if it ran with the old XP system on its jack, levelling-up would have to go up to something obscene, like level 200.

So how do I get myself some of the 'good stuff'? I'm talking CoD Points, of course.

Two different ways. You can take out a contract before a round - these are challenges that require you to play a certain way or achieve a set goal during play (finish on top of your team's leaderboard, get three kills during a Search & Destroy round, etc).

After you've got yourself some moolah, you can gamble it away in one of four Wager Matches.

You mean Wager Matches such as the 'Gun Game', where your weapon ranks up with every kill. Where do these Treyarch types get the ideas from, eh?

Er, Counter-strike mods.

Oh. But moving on: why are Wager Matches free-for-all only? And why can I only play randoms? Man, I hate random people. They're so random.

Treyarch toyed with the idea of team-based Wager Matches during development, but found that there was far too much potential for collusion between teammates.

Same deal with friends playing against each other. You only have to look at Modern Warfare 2's 'booster' phenomenon (where two players squirrel themselves away on a hard-to reach spot of a map and chalk up huge score chains between them) to see how pointlessly easy it would be for scammers to muck things up for everyone.

Cheeky eleventh question coming at you! But it's an important one. Is it possible to draw a great big penis and set it as your emblem?

It'd be a bit weird, but yes you can. The emblem editor lets you flip, scale and combine numerous different preset shapes, so with a lot of time and effort it would indeed be possible to craft yourself the penis emblem of your dreams.

It probably wouldn't last long before the online community flagged it up and you ended up on the sex register, though.

Cheeky twelfth question! Will I be able to carve the word 'KNOB' into my gun?

(Sigh) Yes. Should you wish to, you can carve your clan tag into the side of your gun, no matter how rubbish or puerile it may be.