Was Skyrim ever going to use Games For Windows Live?

Was Skyrim ever going to use Games For Windows Live?

Posted on 18th Aug 2011 at 14:59 by Clive Webster with 36 comments

The news that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will definitely use Steamworks rather than Games For Windows Live has shot around the Internet today, but (and with the greatest of respect to those reporting the story) it doesn?t appear as if Skyrim was ever going to use GFWL.

That hasn?t stopped the rumour of GFWL rubbishness afflicting the next Scrolls Elder Scrolls game (that is confusing, isn?t it?), resulting in the Elder Scrolls Twitter stating that ?We can confirm today that we're using Steamworks for Skyrim?

The confusion came from the promotion picture for Skyrim, where the PC version was placed behind the Xbox 360 and PS3 boxes. The Games For Windows logo was showing and many people worried that the word ?Live? might be on the end. However, the Games For Windows logo features on a lot of game boxes and merely means? actually, I?m not sure what it means, or guarantees and implies. That the game doesn?t run on Linux and Mac?


Anyway, the point is, this logo is harmless and does not mean you have to use GFWL. Moreover, the Games for Windows Live logo is larger, with the Live bit underneath the word Games. It?s easy to spot, and therefore avoid when possible, as these images show:


Quite why Microsoft insists on such stringent online authentication and activation procedures on the PC and is so much more relaxed on the Xbox 360 is beyond me ? piracy is as much of a problem on console as on PC and yet it?s PC gamers that have to suffer the counter-measures. Anyhoo, hope the above helps when you?re out shopping, or looking at future cross-platform release photography!

Check our GamesCom 2011 news hub for all the information from Cologne this year.

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In the Race to Succeed Weiner, a Surprising Anger at Obama

But it was there that Dale Weiss, a 64-year-old Democrat, approached the Republican running for Congress in a special election and, without provocation, blasted the president for failing to tame runaway federal spending. ?We need to cut Medicaid,? she declared, ?but he won?t do that.? She shook her head in disgust. ?He is a moron.?

After nodding approvingly for a time, the Republican candidate, Bob Turner, signaled for an assistant to cut off Ms. Weiss. Frustration with Mr. Obama is so widespread, he explained later, that he tries to limit such rants to about 30 seconds, or else they will consume most of his day.

?It?s endemic in the district,? Mr. Turner said. ?You can?t stop them once they get started.?

The Sept. 13 election was expected to be a sleepy sideshow ? a mere formality that would put  David I. Weprin, a Democratic state assemblyman and heir to a Queens political dynasty, into a Congressional seat that became vacant this summer when Mr. Weiner quit  over an online sex scandal.

Instead, the race has become something far more unsettling to Democrats: a referendum on the president and his party that is highlighting the surprisingly raw emotions of the electorate.

National Democrats, alarmed by a poll that showed the contest far closer than anticipated, are privately fretting that even a close outcome in a working-class swath of Brooklyn and Queens may foreshadow broader troubles for the party in 2012.

The Siena College poll, conducted early this month, showed Mr. Weprin with an advantage of 6 percentage points, within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 points. 

Suddenly Mr. Weprin?s aides have ramped up fund-raising, enlisting big-name figures like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman to headline events. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has dispatched operatives to advise the candidate. And the campaign, aided by big city unions, is drawing up an extensive field operation to turn out the vote.

Few predict a Republican upset: registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one in the Ninth Congressional District. But it is not uniformly liberal ? many Orthodox Jews live there, for example ? and even those closest to Mr. Weprin grudgingly describe the contest as uncomfortably competitive.

On paper, Mr. Weprin seems like a sturdy candidate; he is the former chairman of the City Council?s Finance Committee and the son of an Assembly speaker. His message seems tailor-made for the district: he promises to protect Medicare and raise taxes only on the super-rich.

But the election, waged with little news media attention, offers scant time to remind voters of his biography. And after a long summer of stock market gyrations and battles over the federal debt, voters seem determined to register their frustrations with Washington.

?The issue defining this race,? said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York, ?is the confidence that the electorate has in this district about the national Democratic agenda.?

Mr. Turner, a retired cable television executive running as a business-minded opponent of deficit spending, acknowledges that uneasiness over Mr. Obama could prove decisive. Asked about his strength in the poll, he smiled mischievously.

?Suddenly,? Mr. Turner said of voters, ?they are faced with the most brilliant, dynamic, charismatic, Scott Brownesque candidate,? referring to the Massachusetts senator. Or, he added, people are so angry with the president ?that they can put up some tired old guy with no political experience and he could actually win.?

?You can pick your poison,? he said. ?I suspect that behind it is a great deal of discontent in the district.?

That suspicion was confirmed by interviews with voters like Theodore Feimer, 66, a retired teacher who lives in the Breezy Point section of Queens. He said he was upset with the president and Democrats over the rising national debt. ?I have never spent more money than I made,? he said. ?The president is way off base in his spending.?

Mr. Feimer, an independent, views Mr. Weprin as an extension of Mr. Obama, and wants to restore balance to Congress. ?We live in a tremendously blue city in a blue state,? he said. ?Weprin to me is part of the party regime.?

Mr. Weprin, 55, said the unhappiness was understandable. ?People are frustrated, they are worried,? he said. ?The top guy is the easy guy to take it out on.?

But he said voters were just as likely to be irritated with Washington Republicans for their brinkmanship over the debt ceiling and threats of tipping the country into default.

In much the way that Mr. Turner tries to link Mr. Weprin with the White House, Mr. Weprin seems determined to identify Mr. Turner with the Tea Party. He refers to Mr. Turner, 70, as ?my Republican, Tea Party conservative opponent,? even though Mr. Turner avoids the Tea Party label.

The race has already produced flashes of elbows-out campaign tactics. Mr. Turner has produced a television commercial skewering Mr. Weprin for supporting the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near ground zero. Assemblyman Michael G. DenDekker, a Weprin ally, called the advertisement ?emotional manipulation that just isn?t appropriate.?

And Mr. Turner blames Mr. Weprin for automated telephone calls to voters claiming the Republican would gut Medicare and Social Security. ?It?s a deplorable political ploy,? Mr. Turner said.

In an unusual tactic, Mr. Turner, a Roman Catholic, is directly appealing to Jewish voters by criticizing Mr. Obama?s policies on Israel, despite the fact that Mr. Weprin is an Orthodox Jew.

But in the end, the race is likely to turn on the district?s die-hard Democrats. Special elections generally draw little attention or enthusiasm: advisers to both candidates predict that in a district with more than 300,000 registered voters, as few as 50,000 will vote.

On Friday morning, Mr. Weprin worked a small crowd inside a senior center in the Howard Beach section of Queens, arriving just as aerobics class was coming to an end.

 Some voters assured him that, as the Democrat, Mr. Weprin had their vote. Others seemed skeptical.

?I?m not sure,? said Angelo D?Agostino, a retired firefighter, who steered the conversation to Mr. Obama. ?He?s mishandling everything.?

Mr. Weprin urged the crowd to vote, his tone at times pleading.

?Do you know about the election?? he asked a woman sitting in a row of folding chairs.

 Leaning in, he cracked a nervous joke. ?Your vote,? he  told her, ?is going to count twice.?

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In the Race to Succeed Weiner, a Surprising Anger at Obama

But it was there that Dale Weiss, a 64-year-old Democrat, approached the Republican running for Congress in a special election and, without provocation, blasted the president for failing to tame runaway federal spending. ?We need to cut Medicaid,? she declared, ?but he won?t do that.? She shook her head in disgust. ?He is a moron.?

After nodding approvingly for a time, the Republican candidate, Bob Turner, signaled for an assistant to cut off Ms. Weiss. Frustration with Mr. Obama is so widespread, he explained later, that he tries to limit such rants to about 30 seconds, or else they will consume most of his day.

?It?s endemic in the district,? Mr. Turner said. ?You can?t stop them once they get started.?

The Sept. 13 election was expected to be a sleepy sideshow ? a mere formality that would put  David I. Weprin, a Democratic state assemblyman and heir to a Queens political dynasty, into a Congressional seat that became vacant this summer when Mr. Weiner quit  over an online sex scandal.

Instead, the race has become something far more unsettling to Democrats: a referendum on the president and his party that is highlighting the surprisingly raw emotions of the electorate.

National Democrats, alarmed by a poll that showed the contest far closer than anticipated, are privately fretting that even a close outcome in a working-class swath of Brooklyn and Queens may foreshadow broader troubles for the party in 2012.

The Siena College poll, conducted early this month, showed Mr. Weprin with an advantage of 6 percentage points, within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 points. 

Suddenly Mr. Weprin?s aides have ramped up fund-raising, enlisting big-name figures like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman to headline events. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has dispatched operatives to advise the candidate. And the campaign, aided by big city unions, is drawing up an extensive field operation to turn out the vote.

Few predict a Republican upset: registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one in the Ninth Congressional District. But it is not uniformly liberal ? many Orthodox Jews live there, for example ? and even those closest to Mr. Weprin grudgingly describe the contest as uncomfortably competitive.

On paper, Mr. Weprin seems like a sturdy candidate; he is the former chairman of the City Council?s Finance Committee and the son of an Assembly speaker. His message seems tailor-made for the district: he promises to protect Medicare and raise taxes only on the super-rich.

But the election, waged with little news media attention, offers scant time to remind voters of his biography. And after a long summer of stock market gyrations and battles over the federal debt, voters seem determined to register their frustrations with Washington.

?The issue defining this race,? said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York, ?is the confidence that the electorate has in this district about the national Democratic agenda.?

Mr. Turner, a retired cable television executive running as a business-minded opponent of deficit spending, acknowledges that uneasiness over Mr. Obama could prove decisive. Asked about his strength in the poll, he smiled mischievously.

?Suddenly,? Mr. Turner said of voters, ?they are faced with the most brilliant, dynamic, charismatic, Scott Brownesque candidate,? referring to the Massachusetts senator. Or, he added, people are so angry with the president ?that they can put up some tired old guy with no political experience and he could actually win.?

?You can pick your poison,? he said. ?I suspect that behind it is a great deal of discontent in the district.?

That suspicion was confirmed by interviews with voters like Theodore Feimer, 66, a retired teacher who lives in the Breezy Point section of Queens. He said he was upset with the president and Democrats over the rising national debt. ?I have never spent more money than I made,? he said. ?The president is way off base in his spending.?

Mr. Feimer, an independent, views Mr. Weprin as an extension of Mr. Obama, and wants to restore balance to Congress. ?We live in a tremendously blue city in a blue state,? he said. ?Weprin to me is part of the party regime.?

Mr. Weprin, 55, said the unhappiness was understandable. ?People are frustrated, they are worried,? he said. ?The top guy is the easy guy to take it out on.?

But he said voters were just as likely to be irritated with Washington Republicans for their brinkmanship over the debt ceiling and threats of tipping the country into default.

In much the way that Mr. Turner tries to link Mr. Weprin with the White House, Mr. Weprin seems determined to identify Mr. Turner with the Tea Party. He refers to Mr. Turner, 70, as ?my Republican, Tea Party conservative opponent,? even though Mr. Turner avoids the Tea Party label.

The race has already produced flashes of elbows-out campaign tactics. Mr. Turner has produced a television commercial skewering Mr. Weprin for supporting the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near ground zero. Assemblyman Michael G. DenDekker, a Weprin ally, called the advertisement ?emotional manipulation that just isn?t appropriate.?

And Mr. Turner blames Mr. Weprin for automated telephone calls to voters claiming the Republican would gut Medicare and Social Security. ?It?s a deplorable political ploy,? Mr. Turner said.

In an unusual tactic, Mr. Turner, a Roman Catholic, is directly appealing to Jewish voters by criticizing Mr. Obama?s policies on Israel, despite the fact that Mr. Weprin is an Orthodox Jew.

But in the end, the race is likely to turn on the district?s die-hard Democrats. Special elections generally draw little attention or enthusiasm: advisers to both candidates predict that in a district with more than 300,000 registered voters, as few as 50,000 will vote.

On Friday morning, Mr. Weprin worked a small crowd inside a senior center in the Howard Beach section of Queens, arriving just as aerobics class was coming to an end.

 Some voters assured him that, as the Democrat, Mr. Weprin had their vote. Others seemed skeptical.

?I?m not sure,? said Angelo D?Agostino, a retired firefighter, who steered the conversation to Mr. Obama. ?He?s mishandling everything.?

Mr. Weprin urged the crowd to vote, his tone at times pleading.

?Do you know about the election?? he asked a woman sitting in a row of folding chairs.

 Leaning in, he cracked a nervous joke. ?Your vote,? he  told her, ?is going to count twice.?

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Advanced Electrodes for Better Li-Ion Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries could last longer if their electrodes stored more charge. Korean researchers have now made a new type of anode that holds three times more charge than the conventional graphite anodes used in batteries.

The new anode is made of germanium nanotubes. It charges and discharges five times faster than previously reported silicon anodes, lasts through twice as many charging cycles, and is easier to fabricate. Its 400-cycle life matches that of graphite and is long enough for portable-electronics batteries, says Jaephil Cho, a researcher at South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, who led the new work. "These anodes meet the practical requirements of lithium-ion cells," Cho says.

Cho collaborated with researchers at LG Chem, the Korean company that makes the lithium-ion batteries used in the Chevy Volt. Their results will soon be published online in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The researchers are also working on silicon nanotube anodes.

These advances are part of a broader push by LG Chem to develop better anode materials for higher-capacity batteries. "The company is looking for a breakthrough technology using both silicon and germanium materials for lithium-ion battery anodes," Cho says.

Charging and discharging a lithium-ion battery involves moving lithium ions into and out of the anode. The more lithium the electrode can pack, the more energy the battery can store. Silicon and germanium can, in theory, hold about 10 and four times as much charge as the same amount of graphite by weight. So far, silicon has been the main contender for anodes because it's cheaper, but crystalline silicon breaks down from repeated swelling and shrinking.

Nanostructured materials better withstand stresses from changes in volume, so researchers and a handful of startups are making anodes from silicon nanowires, nanotubes, and porous nanoparticles. Of these, nanotubes have the best charge capacity, Cho says.

The drawback to silicon nanotube anodes, though, has been their low cycle life: they typically maintain their capacity for just 200 cycles. Not only do germanium nanotubes last longer, but they also charge and discharge faster, because lithium ions diffuse through germanium more rapidly.

"Cycling life is one of the key parameters for making practical anodes," says Stanford University materials science professor Yi Cui, whose startup Amprius is commercializing batteries with silicon nanowire anodes. "As an initial demonstration, this is very impressive," Cui says. But, he cautions, germanium's higher cost could be a limitation.

Cho believes that increased interest in germanium anodes could bring about a decrease in the material's cost. "Germanium is an abundant element, and the current price is maintained by the lack of demand," he says. "A hurdle for using germanium in real batteries is cost, but once big battery makers want to use it as an alternative candidate for [anodes], I believe its cost will drop."

The researchers make the nanotubes by heating antimony-coated germanium nanowires at 700 °C for five hours. Germanium atoms diffuse outward and form hollow nanotubes with walls 40 nanometers thick. The process should be easy to scale up to large volumes and could be used for silicon as well, Cho says. What's more, unlike methods commonly used to synthesize silicon and other nanotubes, this method has a high yield and produces uniform nanotubes.

Cho continues to collaborate with LG Chem and other Korean companies on porous silicon nanoparticle anodes. Meanwhile, Cui and others are exploring various new materials for cathodes, which now have much lower energy densities than anodes and can limit a battery's overall charge capacity.

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The New Big Data

Top scientists from companies such as Google and Yahoo are gathered alongside leading academics at the 17th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) in San Diego this week. They will present the latest techniques for wresting insights from the deluge of data produced nowadays, and for making sense of information that comes in a wider variety of forms than ever before.

Twenty years ago, the only people who cared about so-called "big data"?the only ones who had enormous data sets and the motivation to try to process them?were members of the scientific community, says Usama Fayyad, executive chair of ACM's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining and former chief data officer at Yahoo. Even then, the results of data mining were impressive. "We were able to solve significant scientific problems that were standing in the field for 30-plus years," Fayyad says.

The explosive growth of the Internet, however, changed everything. Whether they liked it or not, businesses found themselves operating online and amassing enormous volumes of data about customers and their behavior. As the power of data mining became clear, Fayyad says, so did economic motivations to invest in the field.

Netflix, for example, offered a $1 million prize to any team that could mine its information about users and build a more accurate recommendation system than the one it already had. High-profile examples like this only scratch the surface of the applications for data mining.

"Businesses and industry are increasingly interested in leveraging the data they capture through business processes," says Chid Apte, director of analytics research at IBM and chair of the conference. In particular, he points to health care, social media, and anything that takes place on the Web.

These days, Internet giants make their money from the information they collect about users and the insights they gain from mining it. Retailers can access complex patterns of shopper behavior to help them stock their stores more profitably. Industry researchers can predict automobile traffic patterns based on congestion, weather, and time of year, and offer the best routes.

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Advanced Electrodes for Better Li-Ion Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries could last longer if their electrodes stored more charge. Korean researchers have now made a new type of anode that holds three times more charge than the conventional graphite anodes used in batteries.

The new anode is made of germanium nanotubes. It charges and discharges five times faster than previously reported silicon anodes, lasts through twice as many charging cycles, and is easier to fabricate. Its 400-cycle life matches that of graphite and is long enough for portable-electronics batteries, says Jaephil Cho, a researcher at South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, who led the new work. "These anodes meet the practical requirements of lithium-ion cells," Cho says.

Cho collaborated with researchers at LG Chem, the Korean company that makes the lithium-ion batteries used in the Chevy Volt. Their results will soon be published online in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The researchers are also working on silicon nanotube anodes.

These advances are part of a broader push by LG Chem to develop better anode materials for higher-capacity batteries. "The company is looking for a breakthrough technology using both silicon and germanium materials for lithium-ion battery anodes," Cho says.

Charging and discharging a lithium-ion battery involves moving lithium ions into and out of the anode. The more lithium the electrode can pack, the more energy the battery can store. Silicon and germanium can, in theory, hold about 10 and four times as much charge as the same amount of graphite by weight. So far, silicon has been the main contender for anodes because it's cheaper, but crystalline silicon breaks down from repeated swelling and shrinking.

Nanostructured materials better withstand stresses from changes in volume, so researchers and a handful of startups are making anodes from silicon nanowires, nanotubes, and porous nanoparticles. Of these, nanotubes have the best charge capacity, Cho says.

The drawback to silicon nanotube anodes, though, has been their low cycle life: they typically maintain their capacity for just 200 cycles. Not only do germanium nanotubes last longer, but they also charge and discharge faster, because lithium ions diffuse through germanium more rapidly.

"Cycling life is one of the key parameters for making practical anodes," says Stanford University materials science professor Yi Cui, whose startup Amprius is commercializing batteries with silicon nanowire anodes. "As an initial demonstration, this is very impressive," Cui says. But, he cautions, germanium's higher cost could be a limitation.

Cho believes that increased interest in germanium anodes could bring about a decrease in the material's cost. "Germanium is an abundant element, and the current price is maintained by the lack of demand," he says. "A hurdle for using germanium in real batteries is cost, but once big battery makers want to use it as an alternative candidate for [anodes], I believe its cost will drop."

The researchers make the nanotubes by heating antimony-coated germanium nanowires at 700 °C for five hours. Germanium atoms diffuse outward and form hollow nanotubes with walls 40 nanometers thick. The process should be easy to scale up to large volumes and could be used for silicon as well, Cho says. What's more, unlike methods commonly used to synthesize silicon and other nanotubes, this method has a high yield and produces uniform nanotubes.

Cho continues to collaborate with LG Chem and other Korean companies on porous silicon nanoparticle anodes. Meanwhile, Cui and others are exploring various new materials for cathodes, which now have much lower energy densities than anodes and can limit a battery's overall charge capacity.

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Advanced Electrodes for Better Li-Ion Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries could last longer if their electrodes stored more charge. Korean researchers have now made a new type of anode that holds three times more charge than the conventional graphite anodes used in batteries.

The new anode is made of germanium nanotubes. It charges and discharges five times faster than previously reported silicon anodes, lasts through twice as many charging cycles, and is easier to fabricate. Its 400-cycle life matches that of graphite and is long enough for portable-electronics batteries, says Jaephil Cho, a researcher at South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, who led the new work. "These anodes meet the practical requirements of lithium-ion cells," Cho says.

Cho collaborated with researchers at LG Chem, the Korean company that makes the lithium-ion batteries used in the Chevy Volt. Their results will soon be published online in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The researchers are also working on silicon nanotube anodes.

These advances are part of a broader push by LG Chem to develop better anode materials for higher-capacity batteries. "The company is looking for a breakthrough technology using both silicon and germanium materials for lithium-ion battery anodes," Cho says.

Charging and discharging a lithium-ion battery involves moving lithium ions into and out of the anode. The more lithium the electrode can pack, the more energy the battery can store. Silicon and germanium can, in theory, hold about 10 and four times as much charge as the same amount of graphite by weight. So far, silicon has been the main contender for anodes because it's cheaper, but crystalline silicon breaks down from repeated swelling and shrinking.

Nanostructured materials better withstand stresses from changes in volume, so researchers and a handful of startups are making anodes from silicon nanowires, nanotubes, and porous nanoparticles. Of these, nanotubes have the best charge capacity, Cho says.

The drawback to silicon nanotube anodes, though, has been their low cycle life: they typically maintain their capacity for just 200 cycles. Not only do germanium nanotubes last longer, but they also charge and discharge faster, because lithium ions diffuse through germanium more rapidly.

"Cycling life is one of the key parameters for making practical anodes," says Stanford University materials science professor Yi Cui, whose startup Amprius is commercializing batteries with silicon nanowire anodes. "As an initial demonstration, this is very impressive," Cui says. But, he cautions, germanium's higher cost could be a limitation.

Cho believes that increased interest in germanium anodes could bring about a decrease in the material's cost. "Germanium is an abundant element, and the current price is maintained by the lack of demand," he says. "A hurdle for using germanium in real batteries is cost, but once big battery makers want to use it as an alternative candidate for [anodes], I believe its cost will drop."

The researchers make the nanotubes by heating antimony-coated germanium nanowires at 700 °C for five hours. Germanium atoms diffuse outward and form hollow nanotubes with walls 40 nanometers thick. The process should be easy to scale up to large volumes and could be used for silicon as well, Cho says. What's more, unlike methods commonly used to synthesize silicon and other nanotubes, this method has a high yield and produces uniform nanotubes.

Cho continues to collaborate with LG Chem and other Korean companies on porous silicon nanoparticle anodes. Meanwhile, Cui and others are exploring various new materials for cathodes, which now have much lower energy densities than anodes and can limit a battery's overall charge capacity.

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Weekend tech reading: US anti-piracy bill to cost taxpayers millions

Anti-piracy bill set to cost taxpayers $47m to 2016 PROTECT IP, the U.S. government?s legislation to target individuals and domains connected with allegations of copyright infringement, is set to cost millions of dollars to enforce. According to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, PROTECT IP -- which is designed to benefit US-based entertainment companies -- will cost the taxpayer a cool $47m between 2012 and 2016. TorrentFreak

HP's $99 TouchPad tablet selling out in retailer fire sale Some retailers sold out remaining Hewlett-Packard TouchPad tablets in just a few hours on Saturday after heavily discounted prices attracted buyers to the last remaining units of the soon-to-be defunct tablet.The TouchPad models cleared out by early morning at the Best Buy and Staples stores in New York City's Union Square, salespeople at the stores said. PCWorld

Battlefield 3 PC version won?t have in-game server browser The tables have turned. A day after we gladly reported that console gamers would be getting this great PC feature called ?server browser?, we can now report that PC gamers won?t have an in-game server browser. DICE?s Alan Kertz has confirmed that in order to switch servers, you have to exit Battlefield 3, and use Battlelog to find another server and join. BF3Blog

Windows 8 app store will change Windows software forever Windows 8 is coming, and apparently its bringing a Windows 8 app store with it. Speculation that began with hints of an app store in leaked builds of Windows 8 earlier this year have been all but officially confirmed in a blog post from the President of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live divisions, Steven Sinofsky. PCWorld

Crazy: 90 percent of people don't know how to use CTRL+F This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! The Atlantic

PS Vita specs list arrives, makes hardware fanboys happy Sony has announced the hardware specs for the PS Vita, the upcoming successor to the company?s handheld PSP, and the details (see below) have confirmed most fans? hopes instead of their fears. The heart of the system is an ARM-developed Cortex A9 chip with four cores.. Geek.com

Intel Atom graphics troubles are DirectX related If you remember, yesterday we wrote about Intel delaying its Cedar Trail Atom processors to November, well Intel got in touch with us saying that it had only officially said it would launch Cedar Trail in the second half of this year, so technically it's not late. VR-Zone

Best study ever: Wasting time online boosts worker productivity Spending time online updating your Facebook page, clicking through I Can Has Cheezburger and ogling Robert Pattinson may rot your brain, but new research suggest that it could also make you more productive at work. LA Times

AT&T VP: iPhone 5 coming in early October, prepare to get ?really, really busy? One of our high-level AT&T sources just informed us that an AT&T Vice President has confirmed to several employees that the iPhone 5 is slated to launch in early October. Boy Genius Report

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: Valve?s goal is cross-platform play On the Gamescom 2011 PC Games spoke with Valve head Gabe Newell. PC Games (text is translated, but video is in English)

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HP?s TouchPad firesale could spell success for an Amazon tablet

Last week, Apple saw HP, another of its competitors, in the tablet market literally pack up its stall, put away all of its stock and decide that selling portable tablet computers and smartphones wasn?t something it wanted to do any more.

Prior to the decision to quit making webOS tablets and smartphones, the Wall Street Journal provided an insight into the situation HP was facing when it reported that US retail giant Best Buy had sold just 25,000 units of its 270,000 TouchPad?s in stock, less than 10% of its inventory. Low sales by any manufacturers standards and a stark contrast to Apple?s iPad, a device stock sells out as soon as Apple or its partners receive stock.

HP?s first move when it announced the end of its mobile devices was to declare it would continue to maintain its webOS mobile operating system, seeking partnerships with manufacturers to help push its mobile platform forward by attracting more end-users via more establish smartphone vendors, in the hope that developers would consider porting their applications to webOS to satisfy the demand of new webOS users ? strengthening the ecosystem as a result.

HP customers were understandably upset; many had invested in HP?s webOS devices because the platform was backed by a massive computing company and that it could be a solid alternative to Android, that felt as polished as Apple?s iOS software, only to find that they had a device that its maker no longer wished to continue making.

It was compounded when, just hours after its decision to cease development of webOS mobile devices, HP issued orders to its US and Canadian partners to start a ?fire sale? of its TouchPad products, slashing prices by $250.

The decision to sell off TouchPads at $99 and $149 whipped consumers into a frenzy, HP?s own website quickly sold out of its remaining stock, as Walmart and other major US retailers saw units fly off the shelves. In just over 24 hours, it?s reported that over 350,000 devices were bought ? one Best Buy store in California telling me that they sound 140 TouchPads in an hour ? recouping some of the $100 million in losses HP is predicted to incur as a result of reimbursing sales partners but also those who paid full price for the TouchPad prior to its death notice.

The computing giant is expected to issue the same order to its partners worldwide, spurring massive demand for a device, including consumers who may have never considered buying a tablet before. With the price so low, many will buy the device simply to own a ?modern? tablet, even if it might not be fully supported in the future.

Ultimately, it?s a testament to what Apple has done with the iPad; it seems consumers only want to buy a tablet device if it is made by the world?s biggest technology company. However, as with any market leading product, there will be no shortage of vendors aiming to mimic what Steve Jobs and co. did with their new mobile devices, one of them being Amazon.

The world?s biggest online retailer is soon to launch its own tablet devices, but instead of competing directly on strength of software and build quality, the company is almost certainly going to utilise the business model that ensured its Kindle eader became a roaring success ? undercut each one of its rivals on price and then recoup its losses with additional value-added services.

Sarah Rottman Epps, a technology research specialist at Forrester, talking with The Next Web earlier this month, believes that Amazon has the biggest chance of disrupting Apple?s dominance in North America, based largely on its ability to purposefully record a loss on its device sales as it aims to boost sales of its other products and services.

In effect, Amazon hopes to capitalise on the behaviour demonstrated by consumers that have been hunting down HP TouchPads over the past couple of days, and it could just work.

How low can you go?

Pricing the TouchPad at $99, HP is making a significant loss on every device it sells. The company will have planned for such losses, even if it is left $100 million in the red.

Amazon looks to have a different approach. Whilst the company has been extremely secretive about its plan, numerous sources close to the project have helped to paint a picture of how the retailer intends on ensuring it can keep its increase its margins, whilst innovating on price and features.

PCMag?s Tim Bajarin, citing sources close to Amazon, says that the retail giant is to make sure its tablet device has the ?best reading experience of any tablet on the market,? utilising low-cost parts from lesser-known manufacturers to maintain margins but also ensure its output remains unaffected by rival tablet vendors that have tied up production output in the major manufacturing plants in Asia.

Bajarin writes:

Bezos and his team are thinking about deploying a radical new business model for their tablets. First, to make the tablet?s price really attractive to users, Amazon may actually sell it for as much as 20 to 25 percent below cost. In this situation, think of the tablet as a razor and the Android Appstore, UnBox movie service, and music service as the blades, which can be sold to users over and over again. As I understand it, the idea is to have users? purchases applied to the their tablet through a two-year amortized program that would cover any lost physical cost of the tablet as well as give Amazon some profit. To add to that profit, it could also apply purchases through its Kindle bookstore and items you might buy from the Amazon store. And then add in any Amazon cloud service revenue and advertising and you can see how this could possibly be done. I could not confirm that this model is locked in, but it appears that it?s being highly considered.

From the report, a bill of material costs along with manufacturing costs, shipping, and tariffs was drawn up and put the likely cost of an Amazon tablet at around $300, dependent on specifications. Stripping $50 from the original price, Amazon could begin to tempt its customers with a $249 tablet, a price that would undercut nearly every tablet vendor, not just Apple, Motorola, Samsung and HTC, which are already marketing devices at around the $400 mark and higher.

Amazon has over 250 million credit cards linked to its website that can be tied to its Android Appstore and Cloud services. With an existing revenue stream centred about applications, but also music and movies, adding the Cloud Drive and a platform that allows third-party sellers to sell their products on the main website, Amazon has many opportunities to recoup the $50 lost as a result of its price cuts.

Bajarin puts it at just six months, but it would be different for each of Amazon?s customers.

The beauty of a loss-leading tablet for Amazon is that it would be almost impossible for its rivals to copy. Amazon, with its established ecosystem, trusted presence and customers all over the world, would deal a huge blow to other Android tablet makers ? which are already finding it almost impossible to compete with Apple ? as they would typically not be able to follow suit with drastic price cutting of devices that are simply not in demand.

Amazon?s target market

Despite going on sale in November 2007, Amazon has yet to comment on how many Kindles it has sold in the three and a half years the device has been available to consumers. Analysts peg sales at around the 20 million unit region, as Amazon continues to partner with retailers but also mobile carriers to extend its reach both on and offline.

Loved by commuters for its size, portability and storage capacity, the Kindle succeeds because of its low price-point and its ability to provide enough features for users to not only read electronic books, but browse the internet and have their favourite website feeds delivered to their device via 3G or the device?s in-built WiFi.

Amazon will be able to deliver that, plus apps, videos, music and file storage.

I mentioned earlier that Amazon is thought to be working hard on developing a tablet that is the best e-reading tablet device on the market. To do so, the company has leaned on the supplier of its Kindle display panels, E Ink, to provide Fringe Field Switching panels, which are produced by its subsidiary Hydis, to create an LCD panel that will be able to deliver crisp colour graphics, video and a range of dynamic content. Great for a tablet, but it?s not exactly the e-ink technology that the company uses in its Kindles.

However, there have also been rumours that the company has been able to incorporate dual screen technology that will be able to render e-ink and colour ebooks concurrently. If the rumours are true and the company has been able to so, the company, yet again, has an extraordinary advantage over its rivals.

With Amazon able to tempt existing Kindle customers to a large-form tablet device with the promise of e-ink capabilities, the company will not only raise the interests of new customers, enticed by the promise of a powerful, unique and cheap tablet device, but it will give itself every opportunity of converting existing customers, the most important demographic to the retailer in terms of money spent and brand loyalty.

Price is certainly a limiting factor, but when Amazon can side-load adverts for its new devices and list them in the ?Customers also bought..? sections in its product listings, customers will suddenly be faced with an experience that no other tablet vendor has been, and may not be, able to deliver across a website that lists millions of individual products.

Conclusion

It is assumed that Amazon will utilise the Kindle business model because it has been proven to work, that doesn?t necessarily mean that the company will see a similar explosion in sales of its tablet devices ? although it looks like the company has planned a massive launch, issuing orders for over 2 million touch panels.

If the model doesn?t work, Amazon has many years of marketing experience that would enable the company to pivot, amend its sales process and couple tablets with purchases of luxury items and subscriptions to any number of its services.

Sources close to HP told The Next Web that the the webOS team wanted to drop the TouchPad and Pre hardware before it was even released, Amazon has made sure that this will not be a problem. The retailer?s devices are rumoured to sport the latest quad-core processors, unique display technology and utilises the Android operating system, a platform that consumers have not only come to love but continue to do so.

There won?t be an HP-style fire sale when Amazon finally enters the tablet market but the company will certainly hope consumers react to its pricing in the same way as the reported 350,000 TouchPad buyers did over the past few days.

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In the Race to Succeed Weiner, a Surprising Anger at Obama

But it was there that Dale Weiss, a 64-year-old Democrat, approached the Republican running for Congress in a special election and, without provocation, blasted the president for failing to tame runaway federal spending. ?We need to cut Medicaid,? she declared, ?but he won?t do that.? She shook her head in disgust. ?He is a moron.?

After nodding approvingly for a time, the Republican candidate, Bob Turner, signaled for an assistant to cut off Ms. Weiss. Frustration with Mr. Obama is so widespread, he explained later, that he tries to limit such rants to about 30 seconds, or else they will consume most of his day.

?It?s endemic in the district,? Mr. Turner said. ?You can?t stop them once they get started.?

The Sept. 13 election for the Ninth Congressional District seat became vacant this summer when Mr. Weiner quit over an online sex scandal. The race was widely viewed as a sleepy sideshow ? a mere formality that would put David I. Weprin, a Democratic state assemblyman and heir to a Queens political dynasty, into a seat known for its deep blue hue.

Instead, the race has become something far more unsettling to Democrats: a referendum on the president and his party that is highlighting the surprisingly raw emotions of the electorate.

National Democrats, alarmed by a poll that showed the contest far closer than anticipated, are privately fretting that even a close outcome in a working-class swath of Brooklyn and Queens may foreshadow broader troubles for the party in 2012.

The Siena College poll, conducted early this month, showed Mr. Weprin with an advantage of 6 percentage points, within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 points. 

Suddenly Mr. Weprin?s aides have ramped up fund-raising, enlisting big-name figures like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman to headline events. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has dispatched operatives to advise the candidate. And the campaign, aided by big city unions, is drawing up an extensive field operation to turn out the vote.

Few predict a Republican upset: registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one in the district. But it is not uniformly liberal ? many Orthodox Jews live there, for example ? and even those closest to Mr. Weprin grudgingly describe the contest as uncomfortably competitive.

On paper, Mr. Weprin seems like a sturdy candidate; he is the former chairman of the City Council?s Finance Committee and the son of an Assembly speaker. His message seems tailor-made for the district: he promises to protect Medicare and raise taxes only on the super-rich.

But the election, waged with little news media attention, offers scant time to remind voters of his biography. And after a long summer of stock market gyrations and battles over the federal debt, voters seem determined to register their frustrations with Washington.

?The issue defining this race,? said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York, ?is the confidence that the electorate has in this district about the national Democratic agenda.?

Mr. Turner, a retired cable television executive running as a business-minded opponent of deficit spending, acknowledges that uneasiness over Mr. Obama could prove decisive. Asked about his strength in the poll, he smiled mischievously.

?Suddenly,? Mr. Turner said of voters, ?they are faced with the most brilliant, dynamic, charismatic, Scott Brownesque candidate,? referring to the Massachusetts senator. Or, he added, people are so angry with the president ?that they can put up some tired old guy with no political experience and he could actually win.?

?You can pick your poison,? he said. ?I suspect that behind it is a great deal of discontent in the district.?

That suspicion was confirmed by interviews with voters like Theodore Feimer, 66, a retired teacher who lives in the Breezy Point section of Queens. He said he was upset with the president and Democrats over the rising national debt. ?I have never spent more money than I made,? he said. ?The president is way off base in his spending.?

Mr. Feimer, an independent, views Mr. Weprin as an extension of Mr. Obama, and wants to restore balance to Congress. ?We live in a tremendously blue city in a blue state,? he said. ?Weprin to me is part of the party regime.?

Mr. Weprin, 55, said the unhappiness was understandable. ?People are frustrated, they are worried,? he said. ?The top guy is the easy guy to take it out on.?

But he said voters were just as likely to be irritated with Washington Republicans for their brinkmanship over the debt ceiling and threats of tipping the country into default.

In much the way that Mr. Turner tries to link Mr. Weprin with the White House, Mr. Weprin seems determined to identify Mr. Turner with the Tea Party. He refers to Mr. Turner, 70, as ?my Republican, Tea Party conservative opponent,? even though Mr. Turner avoids the Tea Party label.

The race has already produced flashes of elbows-out campaign tactics. Mr. Turner has produced a television commercial skewering Mr. Weprin for supporting the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near ground zero. Assemblyman Michael G. DenDekker, a Weprin ally, called the advertisement ?emotional manipulation that just isn?t appropriate.?

And Mr. Turner blames Mr. Weprin for automated telephone calls to voters claiming the Republican would gut Medicare and Social Security. ?It?s a deplorable political ploy,? Mr. Turner said.

In an unusual tactic, Mr. Turner, a Roman Catholic, is directly appealing to Jewish voters by criticizing Mr. Obama?s policies on Israel, despite the fact that Mr. Weprin is an Orthodox Jew.

But in the end, the race is likely to turn on the district?s die-hard Democrats. Special elections generally draw little attention or enthusiasm: advisers to both candidates predict that in a district with more than 300,000 registered voters, as few as 50,000 will vote.

On Friday morning, Mr. Weprin worked a small crowd inside a senior center in the Howard Beach section of Queens, arriving just as aerobics class was coming to an end.

 Some voters assured him that, as the Democrat, Mr. Weprin had their vote. Others seemed skeptical.

?I?m not sure,? said Angelo D?Agostino, a retired firefighter, who steered the conversation to Mr. Obama. ?He?s mishandling everything.?

Mr. Weprin urged the crowd to vote, his tone at times pleading.

?Do you know about the election?? he asked a woman sitting in a row of folding chairs.

 Leaning in, he cracked a nervous joke. ?Your vote,? he  told her, ?is going to count twice.?

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