Black Ops set to boost game sales

13 November 2012 Last updated at 07:48 ET

The release of Activision's latest Call of Duty will be closely watched for its effect on lagging video games sales.

Black Ops 2 is the sequel to a 2010 title which holds the record for the world's bestselling console game.

Microsoft has already revealed its rival first-person shooter, Halo 4, made more than $220m (£138m) in global sales on its launch day last week.

Game disk sales in the US were 25% down on the year in October, according to a study by NPD.

It reported that sales had fallen to $756m in what is the sector's biggest market, noting that several other new sequels had not performed as well as previous iterations.

Hack attacks

The latest CoD game marks a change for the series, basing part of its action in the future.

The scenario - in which hackers take control of part of the US's drone aircraft army - was dreamt up in conjunction with the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank in an effort to prevent gamers feeling the series had become overfamiliar.

Its multiplayer mode also puts new emphasis on e-sports in which players are ranked into leagues, and one user can act as a commentator for other spectators.

The innovation is part of efforts to convince consumers to hold onto their disks rather than selling them onto the second-hand market from which publishers do not take a cut of sales.

"We have to give a reason to keep the game," Activision's UK managing director Peter Hepworth, told the BBC.

"There's the multiplayer options to keep people engaged - but even in the single player mode this year there are branching storylines, so your decisions change the ending.

"We think we are giving several reasons to keep playing."

The firm said 16,000 retailers have staged midnight openings around the world to help drum up excitement for the release.

Battle for cash

The series' last entry, Modern Warfare 3 was a bestseller, but did not perform as well as the original Black Ops title - and sales statistics will now be monitored to see if that trend continues.

"Activision has already said that pre-orders for this title were stronger than for its previous releases which is a good sign," said Ed Barton, director of digital media at Strategy Analytics.

"And there are more consoles out there than ever before which should also help. However, the Call of Duty experience has not evolved hugely from its formula, so there may be a sense of audience fatigue - but by the looks of things the positive factors will probably outweigh the negative ones."

Activision's decision to release the game as a launch title for Nintendo's Wii U console - which is due to be released in the US next week - may also boost its fortunes.

But Black Ops 2 faces competition for both cash and gamers' time from other big name action titles.

Microsoft has described last week's release of Halo 4 as the "biggest US entertainment launch of the year", highlighting that the franchise had already generated more than $3.38bn in revenue since 2001. The title has had strong reviews, but is only available on the Xbox.

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed 3, set in the US's War of Independence, has also attracted positive reviews. The firm estimated that 3.5 million copies of the title had been sold in its first week of release - more than double the figure for its previous title.

Capcom's Resident Evil 6; 2K Games' Borderlands 2; EA's Medal of Honor: Warfighter; and Bethesda's Dishonored have also been released in recent weeks.

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Google v Microsoft trial begins

13 November 2012 Last updated at 10:54 ET

A US trial involving Microsoft and Google's Motorola unit could clear up a common topic of contention in recent patent battles.

The firms dispute how much should be paid for a licence to use innovations necessary to be able to offer industry standard technologies.

Google is claiming its rival should pay up to $4bn (£2.5bn) a year for its connectivity and video coding patents.

Microsoft suggests they should be offered for just over $1m a year.

The case, to be heard in Seattle, may set a precedent for how such intellectual property rows should be settled.

It will also have a bearing on Google's attempt to block Microsoft's Xbox games console and other products from sale in the US and Germany.

Licence fees

Microsoft's lawsuit states that Google had requested an excessive amount of money for its Frand-type patents - rights that were supposed to be offered on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms since Motorola had acknowledged their critical status.

The Windows-maker has suggested that Motorola's pool of H.264 video codec patents were worth an annual fee of about $474,000, and its 802.11 wi-fi tech innovations about $736,000 a year. It bases these sums on the "market price" of other patent deals and suggests that if Google's demanded rates became the norm it would become prohibitively expensive to offer what should be basic features.

Google counters that the two firms should have tried to negotiate a deal based on the starting point of a 2.25% royalty demand, which it described as "the only logical starting point" since it had agreed other licences on this basis.

Microsoft's refusal to discuss a deal on these terms prompted Motorola to file lawsuits in the US and Europe seeking to block several Microsoft products from sale on the basis that its rights had been infringed.

In May, Google succeed in winning an injunction against Microsoft in Germany, allowing it to impose a sales ban there against the Xbox 360 games console, Windows 7 system software, Internet Explorer browser and Windows Media Player.

However, it was unable to enforce the ruling after the judge in the current case said he first needed to decide whether Motorola's fees were excessive.

In addition Google is in the process of seeking a similar sales ban in the US through the International Trade Commission.

The fate of those lawsuits could be determined by what the judge in Seattle trial determines to be a reasonable rate for Motorola's patents.

His decision could also be used as a guide to resolve other patent disputes based on industry standard technologies.

A jury will subsequently be asked to use the ruling to determine whether Motorola was in breach of contract by asking for too high a fee.

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Blackberry 10 expected in January

12 November 2012 Last updated at 10:05 ET

The next Blackberry smartphone, which manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) hopes can revive its fortunes, will be introduced on 30 January.

RIM, once a leading name in smartphones, has struggled to keep up with the likes of Apple and Google in recent years.

The new range will run on Blackberry 10, an upgraded operating system.

RIM has not said when the smartphones, which have been set back by multiple delays, will be available to buy.

The devices were set to be launched late this year, but in June the company announced a delay - which means it will miss the critical holiday shopping period.

However, news of the January launch has buoyed investors - shares in the Canadian company rose 5.5% ahead of trading on Monday.

The company said that it will release two models: one with a touchscreen, the other with a Qwerty keyboard - seen as a key benefit among Blackberry fans.

Plummeting shares

In its more successful years, RIM's Blackberry products were considered pioneering devices due to their email capabilities and strong security.

Among young people, Blackberry Messenger - known to many as BBM - was very popular.

However, handsets from the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC has seen the Blackberry fall way behind - blamed in part on its poor support for many of the most popular apps.

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RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins talks through the Blackberry 10 system

Since 2008, the company's share price has dropped by 90%.

"In building Blackberry 10, we set out to create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs," RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins said.

"Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best-in-class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities.

"All of this will be integrated into a user experience - the Blackberry Flow - that is unlike any smartphone on the market today."

According to the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, Blackberry Flow is designed to allow users to move seamlessly between a whole range of apps, heading from an email to calendar to a social network without returning to a home screen.

In an interview with the BBC last month, Mr Heins said users should not "underestimate" the new handsets' potential in the market.

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US takes supercomputer top spots

12 November 2012 Last updated at 12:11 ET

The top two spots on the list of the world's most powerful supercomputers have both been captured by the US.

The last time the country was in a similar position was three years ago.

The fastest machine - Titan, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - is an upgrade of Jaguar, the system which held the top spot in 2009.

The supercomputer will be used to help develop more energy-efficient engines for vehicles, model climate change and research biofuels.

It can also be rented to third-parties, and is operated as part of the US Department of Energy's network of research labs.

The Top 500 list of supercomputers was published by Hans Muer, professor of computer science at Mannheim, who has been keeping track of developments since 1986. It was released at the SC12 supercomputing conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Mixed processors

Titan leapfrogged the previous champion IBM's Sequoia - which is used to carry out simulations to help extend the life of nuclear weapons - thanks to its mix of central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) technologies.

According to the Linpack benchmark it operates at 17.59 petaflop/sec - the equivalent of 17,590 trillion calculations per second.

The benchmark measures real-world performance - but in theory the machine can boost that to a "peak performance" of more than 20 petaflop/sec.

To achieve this the device has been fitted with 18,688 Tesla K20x GPU modules made by Nvidia to work alongside its pre-existing CPUs.

Traditionally supercomputers relied only on CPUs.

CPU cores are designed to handle between one and a few streams of instructions at speed, but are not efficient at carrying out many at once. That makes them well suited for complex tasks in which the answer to one calculation is used to work out the next.

GPU cores are typically slower at carrying out individual calculations, but make up for this by being able to carry out many at the same time. This makes them best suited for "parallellisable jobs" - processes that can be broken down into several parts that are then run simultaneously.

Mixing CPUs and GPUs together allows the most appropriate core to carry out each process. Nvidia said that in most instances its GPUs now carried out about 90% of Titan's workload.

"Basing Titan on Tesla GPUs allows Oak Ridge to run phenomenally complex applications at scale, and validates the use of 'accelerated computing' to address our most pressing scientific problems," said Steve Scott, chief technology officer of the GPU accelerated computing business at Nvidia.

The other top systems included:

• Fujitsu's K computer at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, which was in third spot.
• IBM's BlueGene/Q Mira computer at Argonne National Library, near Chicago in the US, which came fourth.
• Another IBM BlueGene/Q system, called Juqueen, at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany - Europe's fastest - which came fifth.

Out of the top 500 computers, 62 used a mix of CPU and GPU processors. Six months ago the figure was 58.

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eBay inks deal for China growth

12 November 2012 Last updated at 22:00 ET

The operator of the world's biggest online marketplace, eBay, has agreed to partner with a Chinese firm to boost its sales in the country.

It will launch a localized shopping portal, eBay Style, in collaboration with Xiu.com, a Chinese online retailer.

Foreign firms are looking to tap into China's booming internet market, amid sluggish growth in developed nations.

With more than 500 million users, China is the world's biggest internet market.

That is expected to grow even further in the coming years as more people in rural areas get access to the internet.

And with growing popularity of online shopping in the country, China has become a key market for e-commerce with internet firms.

According to various estimates, total online retail trade volume in China was about 800bn yuan ($129bn; £80bn) in 2011 and is expected to increase further this year.

Melanie Tan, the vice president of eBay, said the firm had seen a rise in its sales in China and was keen to explore further growth options.

"Chinese consumers are increasingly coming to eBay and we have seen a 40% year on year increase of goods bought by Chinese consumers navigating eBay.com in English," she said.

"We believe that in the future Chinese consumers will use eBay as a passport to global Fashion styles, especially for leading women's brands and accessories, and menswear," she added.

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Google music position criticised

By Greg Cochrane
Newsbeat music reporter Emeli Sande has the best-selling album of the year so far in the UK

The body which represents the UK's biggest record labels says it "doesn't make sense" for Google not to tackle piracy when it's launching a new, legal music service.

Google says it wants its new music service, Google Play Music, to wipe out piracy on Android devices.

But the BPI claims the firm is not keeping its promise to make it harder to find illegal download sites.

Google said back in August that it was making changes.

The company announced that the new way of calculating results would take into account the number of "valid copyright removal notices" sites had received.

Sites with more notices would rank lower, although Google did not say what it considered a valid notice.

'Undermine artists'

The BPI's [British Phonographic Industry's] chief executive Geoff Taylor, said: "We don't think it makes any sense for them to be doing something which does support artists and then, on the other hand, undermine artists by referring consumers to illegal sites.

Continue reading the main story

Clearly what they promised to do isn't yet working. What we need to do is find out why is that the case and how quickly can they fix it

Geoff Taylor, BPI

"We personally think that three months should be long enough to get it working."

Sami Valkonen, head of international licensing for Google Play, said it was not as easy as that.

"The way that our search engine works is a completely separate algorithm from anything we do on Google Play," he said.

"Our search algorithm is a very complex beast and how it works, I have no clue."

iTunes rival?

Google Play says it hopes to rival the dominance of Apple iTunes in the UK by offering customers the chance to store up to 20,000 tracks in a cloud for free.

"We'll make it easy for consumers to acquire legal music," said Sami Valkonen.

"I think that is something that is hopefully going to make piracy obsolete because it's so easy to operate within the bounds of the law that there is really no need to go beyond them."

The BPI says it welcomes the addition of a new legal service to the UK market, adding "it's good for the music industry and for consumers to have choice".

Already available in the US, Google Play makes millions of tracks available for a typical price of around 99p.

Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter

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EU reveals Azerbaijan hacking

13 November 2012 Last updated at 05:55 ET

Laptops belonging to European Commission officials were hacked when taken to a government conference in Azerbaijan, says an official.

The attack was revealed by European Commissioner Neelie Kroes in a blogpost after attending an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Baku.

Security warnings from Apple revealed that the laptops had come under attack.

Azerbaijan disputed the attack details but said it would investigate any official complaint.

In the blogpost Ms Kroes said she was ambivalent about attending the IGF meeting in Baku because of the country's poor record on human rights.

She was persuaded to attend, she said, because the IGF can be a catalyst for change and because of a pledge from the Azerbaijan president that would meet political prisoners.

The IGF is a UN-backed discussion group that stages conferences to debate the future of internet policies, practices and technologies.

'Spy attack'

Despite the assurances Ms Kroes did not get to meet any prisoners, she wrote. In addition, she said: "Activists were harassed at the internet conference. My advisers had their computers hacked.

"So much for openness," she said.

The hack attacks on laptops owned by two members of Ms Kroes' staff took place when the laptops were in a hotel in Baku, said spokesman Ryan Heath.

Security messages from Apple revealed that "third parties" had accessed the machines, he said.

"I'm presuming it was some kind of surveillance," Mr Heath told AP. "What we're going to do is to get the computers forensically analysed to see what if anything was taken out of them."

Mr Heath declined to speculate on who was behind the attacks.

A spokesman for the Azerbaijani 's president's office said local law enforcement and the managers of the hotel where Ms Kroes and her staff stayed had been told to "address the issue".

So far, the spokesman told Azerbaijan's Trend newspaper, no facts or evidence about the attacks had been passed to authorities.

"If Kroes and her assistant really believe that there was interference in their computers, then please let them turn to the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office," he said. "A criminal case will be filed and investigation will be launched based on this appeal."

The spokesman denied there had been any interference with the laptops and said Ms Kroes' claims were made to undermine the image of the country.

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Lockheed warns on cyber-attacks

13 November 2012 Last updated at 06:50 ET

US defence firm Lockheed Martin says it has seen the number and sophistication of international cyber-attacks increase dramatically in recent months.

According to the firm, 20% of threats directed at it are now considered "advanced and persistent".

The news come as US officials step up their warnings about cyber-attacks on US institutions.

Lockheed Martin declined to say where any of the attacks had originated.

China and Iran have been linked to a series of attacks against western targets in recent months.

Speaking about how it is dealing with cyber-attacks, Chandra McMahon, Lockheed's vice-president and chief information security officer, said: "The number of campaigns has increased dramatically over the last several years.

"The pace has picked up."

Tenacious adversary

One of the biggest issues for the firm is hackers targeting its suppliers, she said.

In May 2011, it emerged that Lockheed Martin had come under significant cyber-attack. It happened, in part, because of an earlier attack on RSA, a security firm that supplied the firm with secure ID tokens.

"The adversary was able to get information from RSA and then they were also able to steal information from another supplier of ours, and they were able to put those two pieces of information together and launch an attack on us," said Ms McMahon.

She said that in this case, the "adversary" had been tracked for years beforehand and the firm had lost no data because its own in-house detection systems flagged up the breach.

She said that one of the lesson learned from the breach was the importance of sharing data with other defence companies and suppliers.

"The adversary has been very significant and tenacious and has really been targeting the defence industrial base," she said.

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How email trail aided Petraeus case

13 November 2012 Last updated at 08:23 ET By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Email messages were at the heart of the affair between former CIA director David Petraeus and his lover Paula Broadwell.

The pair regularly exchanged messages while conducting their affair and regularly used Google's web-based email service Gmail.

The messages were also key to the FBI's investigation and helped it, once it had followed a trail of digital fingerprints, unearth evidence of the affair.

Initially, however, FBI investigators had no idea about the magnitude of what they were to uncover. Instead the investigation began when Tampa resident Jill Kelley told a friend in the bureau that she kept receiving emails threatening her and telling her to stop fraternising with senior US military staff.

As a favour the friend started to look into the case thinking, reports NBC, that it was a simple case of cyber-harassment.

Starting point

The FBI quickly escalated the investigation because the threatening emails regularly quoted detailed information about the private movements of generals involved with the US Central and Southern Commands. Both are run out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

The investigation almost stalled because the email accounts from which the messages originated had been registered anonymously. However, what was not concealed was the IP (internet protocol) address of the computers from which the messages were sent.

Jacques Erasmus, a veteran computer security investigator at Webroot, said tracing an IP address was the starting point of any digital forensic investigation.

"It's definitely one of the first things you do," he said. IP addresses are essential to the running of the internet, he said, and are needed so data knows where to travel to and from.

"Once you have the IP address you run it through domain tools to get some more information," he said.

Domain tools reveal who owns a particular IP address. Because almost every IP address has been assigned to a company, government, agency or ISP (internet service provider) this helps narrow down which network the messages in this case came from.

Other tools, such as Maxmind, would help find out the physical location of a particular IP address, he said.

"It's roughly accurate," he said, "but it won't give you the street and house number."

Armed with information about where the messages originated, the FBI is believed to have drawn up a list, as far as was possible, of who was at those locations when messages were sent.

One name kept cropping up in that list - Paula Broadwell. It soon became obvious that messages were being sent from hotels where she stayed during a tour to promote the biography she wrote of Gen Petraeus.

Case cracked

Once it knew Ms Broadwell was the sender of the threatening messages, the FBI got a warrant that gave it covert access to the anonymous email account. This led it to uncover evidence of the affair and the "trick" Gen Petraeus and Ms Broadwell used to conceal their affair.

This trick, said Mr Erasmus, is well known in intelligence and cyber-crime circles as a way to thwart surveillance.

It involves two people knowing the login name and password for a web-based email account. Instead of sending messages, the two write draft messages that are never sent. Instead, the messages sit on the email services server and are seen when any account owner logs in.

As no messages travel, this ruse can hinder an investigation as there will be less information to go on.

The lengths that people went to in order to conceal IP addresses varied, said Mr Erasmus, by the skill of their adversary. Using a shared Gmail account was probably thought to be safe enough as neither ever thought they would be investigated by the FBI.

By contrast, he said, many cybercriminals went to extraordinary lengths to conceal IP addresses because, he said, knowing that fragment of information can be the key that cracks a case.

Often, he said, an investigation only succeeded because criminals made a single mistake that experts capitalised on. For instance, he said, the gang behind the Koobface worm were unmasked thanks to dogged digital detective work done on a single email address.

However, said Mr Erasmus, progress in any investigation was linked to the resources an organisation could commit to it.

"I suspect the FBI are going to bring more resources to bear than I ever could when trying to track someone down," he said.

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Windows chief leaves Microsoft

13 November 2012 Last updated at 10:43 ET

Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsoft's Windows division, has left the company with immediate effect.

His departure comes just weeks after Microsoft launched Windows 8, the latest edition of its flagship product, seen as key to the firm's future.

Microsoft did not give any reason for Mr Sinofsky's departure.

However, industry watchers suggest that the real reason could be an internal "war" between him and chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Markets took the news badly, with Microsoft's shares losing 4% in Tuesday morning trading on Wall Street.

The company said Julie Larson-Green would be promoted to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering.

"This is shocking news. This is very surprising," said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities.

He added that many observers saw Mr Sinofsky as a potential successor to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive.

In a letter to all employees, published by Forbes, Mr Sinofsky set out to quell the rumours about his departure.

"Some might notice a bit of chatter speculating about this decision or timing. I can assure you that none could be true as this was a personal and private choice that in no way reflects any speculation or theories one might read - about me, opportunity, the company or its leadership," he said.

Continue reading the main story

Sinofsky's exit, just weeks after the launch of Windows 8, raises questions about the future direction of the business, not least because he was seen as a credible successor to Ballmer.

A 23 year veteran of the company, he was a familiar figure to anyone who attended a Microsoft launch, a polished performer explaining just why we should be excited about the latest innovations in the Windows operating system.

"It is impossible to count the blessings I have received over my years at Microsoft," he added.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with research firm Gartner, said that Mr Sinofsky's were big boots to fill.

"The reasons why he left don't matter all that much but the big question is about how Microsoft fills the void," he said.

"He did a lot more than head up a division, he had a unified vision of Microsoft as an ecosystem, tying together the PC, phone, tablet, Xbox and online services. The ramifications of his departure are yet to be felt."

He added that the immediacy of his departure was "strange".

"You don't often see that at that level," he said.

'A new era'

Mr Sinofksy's departure is the latest change at the top of some of the world's biggest technology companies.

Continue reading the main story

Last month, Apple announced that Scott Forstall, head of its iOS software, and John Browett, head of retail, would be leaving the firm.

The announcement followed problems with Apple's new mapping software and disappointing quarterly results.

Meanwhile, Yahoo - which has been trying to regain some of its lost market share - also hired a new chief operating officer in October.

In July the internet company appointed its third chief executive in a year.

Microsoft's Mr Ballmer said the changes in leadership were aimed at ensuring the firm continued to be a dominant player in the sector.

"The products and services we have delivered to the market in the past few months mark the launch of a new era at Microsoft," Mr Ballmer said.

"To continue this success it is imperative that we continue to drive alignment across all Microsoft teams, and have more integrated and rapid development cycles for our offerings."

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