I'm not sure video game players need more incentive to check out Assassin's Creed III. Between its setting during the American Revolution, delightful use of muskets and naval warfare, the action title from Ubisoft has made a strong impression thus far.
In case you need more convincing, the publisher has launched a fresh trailer taking viewers through the world of Assassin's Creed III and its AnvilNext technology.
The game launches Oct. 30 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Mon Aug 6, 2012 7:43pm EDT
n">(Reuters) - Leap Wireless International Inc's quarterly revenue missed Wall Street estimates as more customers defected and average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) at the low-cost mobile services provider fell for the first time in seven quarters.
Shares of the company, which focuses on cost-conscious customers and competes with MetroPCS Communications Inc, fell 15 percent in trading after the bell.
The company said customer retention programs did not work out as well as expected and came at a higher-than-anticipated cost.
Leap and some other low-cost carriers have been hurt by rising competition that has forced them to shift focus toward smartphones, but this has also lead to costly subsidies to boost subscriber growth.
"While we had substantial handset supply throughout the quarter, certain popular handsets were either not available for sale because of quality issues or did not meet changes in customer needs over time," CEO Doug Hutcheson said on a call with analysts.
"In some cases, this required the company to meet customer demand with more expensive devices, increasing our subsidy expense."
Leap said in May that it would sell the iPhone, joining much bigger national rivals Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc and Sprint Nextel Corp in selling the popular Apple Inc device.
The company will sell the 16 GB iPhone 4S for $499.99, compared with its rivals' $199.99 price tag. Leap customers, however, will pay smaller monthly service fees and will not need to sign long-term contracts.
Customer retention in the quarter was also hurt by reduced promotional activity, Chief Financial Officer Jerry Elliott told Reuters.
He sees some of these problems continuing into the third quarter, but said the retention programs have been stopped and expects ARPU to track back to higher levels.
FALLING NUMBERS
Leap reported a net subscriber loss of about 289,000 in the second quarter, compared with a net loss of about 103,000 customers a year earlier.
Analysts had expected its subscriber numbers to fall by 48,000 to 100,000, according to five analysts contacted by Reuters.
Average revenue per user fell for the first time since the third quarter of 2010 to $41.64, while churn — or customer defection rate — rose to 4.4 percent from 4.2 percent a year earlier.
Net loss attributable to common stockholders narrowed to $41.6 million, or 54 cents per share, for the second quarter from $65.2 million, or 85 cents per share, a year earlier.
Revenue rose 3.5 percent to $786.8 million.
Analysts on average had expected a loss of 50 cents per share on revenue of $836.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
MetroPCS reported second-quarter earnings well above analysts' estimates last month as it cut costs by holding back on smartphone promotions.
Shares of the company, which closed up 6 percent at $5.52 on the Nasdaq on Monday, fell to $4.70 in trading after the bell.
The stock has fallen 10 percent since it said it would start selling the iPhone on concerns that margins would be hurt.
(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Anthony Kurian)
Want a taste of what the classic first-person shooter Doom 3 will look like with a high-definition makeover?
Publisher Bethesda Softworks has released some fresh images featuring Doom 3: BFG Edition, which launches Oct. 16 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Along with HD visuals, the re-release includes a "Lost Mission" consisting of seven levels, support for Achievements and Trophies as well as 3-D, plus the expansion Resurrection of Evil and original copies of Doom and Doom 2.
The PC version will sell for $29.99, while console copies go for $39.99.
Scroll down to check out some more images of the game.
LONDON | Tue Aug 7, 2012 11:19am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Remote-controlled miniatures of Mini cars whizzing around the athletics stadium to shuttle javelins, discus and hammers back to the athletes have triggered branding questions at what are strictly ad-free Olympic venues at the London Games.
The International Olympic Committee ensures adverts or logos of products are not visible in the fields of play in line with its Olympic Charter despite sponsors paying hundreds of millions of dollars to be associated with the Games.
The Minis, made by German car manufacturer BMW who is also Games sponsors, may not carry visible logos but are instantly recognizable for what they are.
However, they are not the iconic British-owned Minis produced from 1959-2000 but the new type produced by BMW.
"There is no commercial reason (behind choosing Minis)," said Timo Lumme, the IOC's director of TV and marketing services on Tuesday when asked by reporters if branding rules were being broken.
He said the choice as transporters for the athletes' equipment was not dictated by a commercial decision.
Since the start of the athletics competitions last week, the Minis have instantly become a point of discussion with their use inside the stadium raising the questions of whether the IOC was indirectly relaxing its own strict ad rules.
He said the International Association of Athletics Federations, responsible for the track and field competitions at the Olympics, had cleared the use of the small vehicles.
"IAAF validates several different transporters. Yes, it happens to be the official partner of the London Games but there is no commercial delivery," he told a news conference.
"There is no link between the sponsorship and the coverage of the physical fact that these are mini Minis on the field of play," Lumme said.
The IOC's rule on advertising states that no form of advertising or other publicity shall be allowed in and above the stadia, venues and other competition areas which are considered as part of the Olympic sites.
Commercial installations and advertising signs are not be allowed in the stadia, venues or other sports grounds.
There are three of these vehicles in total. Each puts in four-hour shifts across nine days of athletics competition, covering six kilometers per day.
The Mini also featured in the Games opening ceremony but again it was the new version and not the one symbolizing iconic British post-war design.
"The bottom line is that the producer showed an individual quirkiness, a fantastically entertaining take on British history," said Lumme of the car's presence in the opening ceremony.
"The Mini is an incredibly known globally, British icon. Again Rule 50 compliant. No logos," he said.
The London Games have received some 700 million pounds ($1.09 billion) from sponsors wishing to be associated with the 2012 Olympics.
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
Members of Free Syrian Army, who defected from the regular army, are seen in Kafranbel, near Idlib Syria July 28, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Shaam News Network/HandoutBy Peter Apps, Political Risk CorrespondentLONDON | Tue Aug 7, 2012 2:11pm EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - On Sunday, it was a hijacked Reuters Twitter feed trying to create the impression of a rebel collapse in Aleppo. On Monday, it was another account purporting to be a Russian diplomat announcing the death in Damascus of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
As the situation on the ground becomes ever more bloody, both sides in Syria are also waging what seems to be an intensifying conflict in cyberspace, often attempting to use misinformation and rumor to tilt the war in reality.
On Friday, Reuters was forced to temporarily shut down its system for posting blogs on www.Reuters.com after the appearance of a series of unauthorized, and inaccurate, reports citing opposition military reverses in Syria.
On Sunday, the company took similar action to suspend the @ReutersTech Twitter account after it appeared to have been seized, renamed and used to send a series of false tweets apparently designed to undermine the rebel Free Syrian Army. Both incidents remain under investigation.
The attacks were not the first time a major media or other organization had been targeted apparently by supporters of Assad. Some - including the defacement of a Harvard University website last year to post a picture of Assad in military uniform -- have been claimed by the "Syrian Electronic Army".
But Assad's government too have had their own embarrassments in cyberspace. Hacker group Anonymous claimed credit for stealing thousands of internal Syrian government e-mails including personal communications between Assad and his wife. The entire tranche was later published online by Wikileaks.
"It's not surprising that Syria has attempted to develop a cyber warfare capability. It's in line with their chemical and biological warfare programs and their aspirations as a regional power," said John Bassett, former senior official at British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at London's Royal United Services Institute.
"But the regime's technical capabilities look pretty basic, and the opposition hacking of the personal emails of Assad and his wife earlier this year show the regime's cyber defenses have serious weaknesses."
The opposition too, many suspect, have been doing what they can do to spread rumors about their opponents. On Monday afternoon, a Twitter account purporting to be that of a senior Russian official said Assad had been killed in Damascus, prompting a flurry of speculation and telephone calls by agencies such as Reuters before the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the news was fake.
"Cyber attacks are the new reality of modern warfare," said Hayat Alvi, lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at the US Naval War College. "We can expect more... from all directions. In war, the greatest casualty is the truth. Each side will try to manipulate information to make their own side look like it is gaining while the other is losing."
With Assad's opponents desperate to attract defectors - such as Prime Minister Riyad Hijab who fled on Monday - and the government keen to avoid further foreign support for rebels already backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the stakes are undoubtedly high. The Alawite-dominated government needs to demonstrate it can survive, while the rebels must present themselves as a coherent government in waiting and keep down talk of potential Al Qaeda infiltration.
In recent months, the "Syrian Electronic Army" (SEA) in particular looks to have adopted a strategy to target media outlets to spread disinformation helpful to the Damascus government or harmful to its foes.
In April, Saudi-based broadcaster Al Arabiya briefly lost control of one of its twitter accounts, which was then used to spread a string of stories suggesting a political crisis in Qatar. Tweets included claims that the Qatari prime minister had been sacked, his daughter arrested in London and that a coup orchestrated by the army chief was underway.
In July, Al Jazeera suffered a similar attack, with one of its Twitter feeds used to send a series of pro-Assad messages including accusing the Qatar-based channel of fabricating evidence of civilian casualties in Syria.
Such exchanges, experts say, are increasingly becoming part of any conflict. During the 2008 Georgia war, Russian and Georgian hackers - either state-backed or operating independently - each mounted a range of attacks on each other's official websites.
STRICTLY LIMITED EFFECT
In reality, however, there seems little sign such incidents made a significant difference either on the ground in Syria or to the wider geopolitical picture.
The assorted Reuters blog postings on Friday published through a now closed vulnerability in the WordPress software used to manage the site, bore a superficially convincing resemblance to other genuine entries.
But the written style - as well as some of the grammar and style - were notably different to real Reuters reports, which continued to be posted without difficulty and disseminated to Reuters media, financial and other clients.
While some of the false blog posts were at least briefly shared via social media by readers who believed they were honest reports from Aleppo, it is far from clear whether anyone in the embattled city itself ever saw them.
A Reuters reporter on the ground quickly confirmed the reported rebel collapse in several key named suburbs appeared to be false, and postings themselves were quickly removed - although occasional screenshots remain on the Internet.
Nor does it appear that anyone was particularly convinced by the Sunday flurry of tweets from the captured @ReutersTech Twitter account, hastily renamed @ReutersME in an apparent attempt to present itself as a Middle East-based feed.
Again, there was a series of messages detailing a supposed rebel defeat in Aleppo, where heavy fighting continued on Monday with opposition forces still in control of much of the city. The account said rebel forces were out of ammunition and in "a sad situation" while the Syrian army boasted the fight was like "shooting fish in a barrel".
It then went on to claim that the White House had confirmed it was arming Al Qaeda militants within Syria as part of its support for the fight against Assad. In the final handful of tweets before access was cut, the user said Washington had always funded Al Qaeda even in the decade since the September 11, 2001 attacks and then accused Reuters itself of being in the "iron grip" of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
"The problem with these attacks is that they are always quickly noticed and even if they are successful in grabbing headlines and fooling people for a short period of time, they have very limited effect," said Tal Be'ery, web security research team leader at IT security firm Imperva.
"They are not that technically sophisticated, and my assessment is that they would most likely be from amateurs rather than the regime itself. That tells us that Assad still has some support amongst people able to do this both inside and outside the country, but that is about it."
TRACKING OPPOSITION REAL PRIORITY
Monday's Twitter-fuelled rumors of Assad's demise, knocked down within minutes, could conceivably have shaken some of his supporters but are unlikely to have lasted long.
The true priority for the real computer experts of both the government and opposition, most believe, will be the cat and mouse game between government surveillance systems and the opposition networks they are trying to track.
For Assad's opponents, evading government detection has long been a matter of life and death. Autocratic governments around the world, specialists say, have put considerable effort into tightening their Internet surveillance on potential dissidents since last year's "Arab spring" ousted rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
"The primary target of SEA is certainly their own citizens," said Alexander Klimburg, cyber security expert and fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs.
"It is hard to estimate how successful they are tracking the protesters, but it seems they are much better at it than the former Tunisian or Egyptian secret police, and seem just as good as the Iranian security forces in this regard."
Some believe Assad may be getting technical support from his long-term allies in Tehran, who successfully crushed their own post-election protests that were in part organized over the Internet. China and Russia too are has amongst the world leaders in managing online political activism and dissent, with the latter at least also seen likely helping out in Syria.
"We know that they have been having a lot of success with fake online Facebook profiles, ssl certificates and other methods to break into the opposition," said Imperva's Be'ery. "We know that Russia was very involved in setting up the Syrian signals intelligence system and it is possible they still have access to Russian expertise and even experts."
The opposition too may also have foreign support. Some suspect the hand of a western signals intelligence agency in the Assad e-mail leak, while the U.S. State Department says it has given them technical advice and equipment to help stay one step ahead of government monitoring.
But Syria's Assad, experts say, has long taken an interest in the Internet and its potential uses. Before taking the presidency, he was president of the "Syrian Computer Society", a group now widely believed to have been something of a precursor to the "Syrian Electronic Army".
"It is probably not officially integrated into the security services," Klimburg said. "As such, it performs similar tasks to the "Shabbiha" militias - intimidation of local anti-government forces and direct operations that the Assad regime thinks are best not associated with it."
(Reporting By Jon Hemming)
(This story has been refiled to fix garble)
Video game players have heard plenty about the single-player campaign for Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but what most fans of the first-person shooter really care about is the popular multiplayer mode.
Activision and studio Treyarch have released a video with the first glimpse at multiplayer, which features a host of fresh pieces of gear.
Among some of the new items we spotted:
-- The "Guardian Suppress," a turret that seems to emit heat to slow enemies down.
-- The Dragonfly, a four-propeller flying device players can use to hover around the battlefield and pick apart enemies.
-- Riot shields players can plant in the ground and shoot through using an opening near the top of the item.
-- An A.G.R. mech that marches through maps and mows down opponents with powerful guns mounted on its sides.
Black Ops II arrives Nov. 13 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
A photo of the Google Inc. logo is shown on a computer screen in San Francisco, California July 16, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Robert GalbraithBy Alexei OreskovicSAN FRANCISCO | Wed Aug 8, 2012 12:38am EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc and Oracle Corp's copyright and patent battle took a strange twist on Tuesday, after a judge ordered the companies to disclose the names of journalists, bloggers and other commentators on their payrolls.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said he was concerned that Google and Oracle and/or their counsel may have retained or paid people who may have published comment on the case.
The order, several months after a jury found that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents, hints at the possibility of a hidden world of for-pay press coverage and injects uncertainty into the widely-followed case.
Alsup issued a one page order but did not go into full details of the court's concerns.
"The court is concerned that the parties and/or counsel herein may have retained or paid print or internet authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who have and/or may publish comments on the issues in the case," Alsup wrote in Tuesday's order.
He said the information "would be of use on appeal" and could "make clear whether any treatise, article, commentary or analysis on the issues posed by this case are possibly influenced by financial relationships to the parties or counsel."
The companies must submit the information by noon August 17.
Oracle sued Google in federal court, claiming the search engine giant's Android mobile platform violated its patents and copyright to Java, seeking roughly $1 billion on its copyright claims.
But the jury ruled in Google's favor and the judge decided Oracle could not claim copyright protection on most of the Java material that Oracle took to trial.
Oracle has said it will appeal.
The trial, which featured testimony from high-profile technology executives including Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison and Google CEO Larry Page, attracted heavy media coverage from the mainstream press and technology-focused blogs.
One of the more well-known bloggers on intellectual property matters and on the Oracle vs Google case, Florian Mueller, revealed three days into the trial that Oracle had recently become a consulting client of his. People who followed the case said they weren't aware of any other similar examples.
An Oracle spokeswoman said in a statement that the company has "always disclosed all of its financial relationships in this matter, and it is time for Google do to the same. We read this order to also include indirect payments to entities who, in turn, made comments on behalf of Google."
Google said the company would comply with the order.
What impact the order could have on the case remains unclear, legal experts said.
"I haven't seen anything quite like this before. I think the judge is in uncharted territory with this order," said Eric Goldman, a professor of Internet law at Santa Clara University School of Law.
Goldman said two potential reasons for the order would be if there were evidence that the jury had been swayed by extensive press coverage of the case or if the jury had relied on evidence not properly labeled as unbiased, such as a for-pay news article offered as an exhibit in the trial.
Goldman, who blogged about the case, said that he might likely appear on the list, since his website features ads distributed by Google's online advertising network.
"The court has really wide discretion in granting a remedy to fix any kind of wrongdoing," said Julie Samuels, an intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Samuels said the judge could order a retrial, but stressed that would be a highly extreme and unlikely scenario.
The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Oracle America, Inc v. Google Inc, 10-3561.
(Editing by Michael Perry)
