Blog - Works 'n' Water

Does Flash Really Sap Your iPhone Battery?

Famously, you can do almost anything on an iPhone apart from run Adobe Flash; a move that Apple has always defended on the grounds that Flash isn?t finger-friendly and that it drains the battery life too much.

According to IT Pro, this firmly held line has led to ?one of the most bitter and unresolved disputes in the technology industry.? What's more, the site has also undertaken some testing to discover the truth about the iPhone Flash video and battery life debate.

IT Pro sets the battle-lines between Apple and Adobe by pointing out that ?Apple?s backing of H.264 over Flash has helped increase the popularity of H.264. For example, YouTube has converted its entire library to H.264 for playback on iOS devices.?

If this trend is widened to all mobile devices, one of Adobe?s primary products will be undermined by the increasing demand and importance of smartphones and tablet PCs. However, if Apple is incorrect to deny iOS devices access to Flash, alternative mobile OSes such as Android would become even more popular, leaving Apple?s shiny iPhones and iPads gathering dust on the shelves.

IT Pro?s testing methods involved creating two video files of the same movie, ?one using the H.264 codec in a .m4v container and the other using the Sorenson Spark codec, one of the most popular codecs used in online Flash videos before the rise of H.264, in a .flv container.?

The tester then played back these videos in a few different playback apps, measuring the time before the battery of a Samsung Galaxy Tab and an Apple iPod Touch gave out. The test setup was actually quite complicated to ensure comparability, so for more details, see IT Pro?s test setup page.

The results were surprising to say the least ? Apple?s Videos app was more frugal with the power draw than the VLC app, for example. ?Either Apple's in-house app developers are very good (or have access to some trick or a private API for prolonging battery life) or Applidium, the developers of the VLC app, still have a lot of work to do.?

Meanwhile, the Android-powered Galaxy Tab lasted for half an hour less when playing the Flash version of the video than when playing the H.264 file. What's more, the difference was even greater on the Apple device.

For a bit more analysis, it's also worth heading over to the conclusion page.

Is Apple completely justified or totally wrong to ban Flash from iPhones and iPads? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

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Microsoft pushes Intel for 16-core Atom processor

I think too, the governments should regulate companies that make microproccesors, so that they strive to make products more efficient.

For example, limiting the maximum TPD on ALL cpus with more performance like the Intel Core i family and AMD Phenoms in the coming years, something

2011 to 90 watts of TDP,
2012 to 60 watts of TDP,
2013 to 40 watts of TDP,
and so ...

Intel, AMD you can do it !

For a green world
Thanks to Greenpeace.

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Political Blogs Ready to Flood Campaign Trail

What Mr. Pawlenty does have is a beat reporter from Politico chronicling every utterance and movement of his noncampaign: a 25-year-old named Kendra Marr, who followed him through subzero temperatures last week equipped with a salt-coated Chevrolet Malibu rental, a laptop and a hand-held video camera.

The New Hampshire primary is over a year away, and the first major candidate has yet to formally declare. Just don?t tell that to outlets like Politico, Talking Points Memo and RealClearPolitics, which are already planning to smother the 2012 campaign trail in a way they could never have imagined four years ago when they had far smaller staffs of bloggers and shoestring budgets.

With an eye toward earning greater respectability, this crop of political Web sites is hoping for more than just page views and traffic-driving links from the Drudge Report. They want to establish themselves as the Blogs on the Bus.

?We were a garage band in 2008, riffing on the fly,? said Jim VandeHei, Politico?s executive editor and co-founder. ?Now we?re a 200-person production, with a precise feel and plan.?

Politico will host, with NBC News and Telemundo, the first debate of the campaign season on May 2, getting a head start on a season of face-offs that is already remarkably busy. (Politico edged ahead of Fox News, which scheduled a debate for May 5.)

Politico has nearly tripled its staff since 2008, when it was already a formidable if somewhat overextended presence on the campaign trail.

It will start a Web site, 2012 Live, this weekend that will serve as a home for what Mr. VandeHei described as ?tons and tons of stories? in addition to the kind of minutiae that Politico believes political enthusiasts can never get enough of ? politicians? daily schedules, county-by-county demographic data in key primary states and historical voting trends.

There will be biographies in micro-detail, right down to midlevel state campaign consultants and unelected local political leaders. If you do not know who Rich Ashooh is, you will after reading Politico?s new site. (Hint: he is a lobbyist in New Hampshire who reportedly has ?an impressive Rolodex.?)

Politico has also developed an interactive map that tracks where candidates have traveled as far back as 2008 and how many visits they have made to a particular state ? a feature resembling the Santa Tracker for children on Christmas Eve.

If all this sounds as if the question ?How much is too much?? has never occurred to Politico, that is because it hasn?t.

?There probably is in theory a point where there?s too much,? Mr. VandeHei said. ?But we certainly haven?t discovered it.?

Politico?s mission in 2012, Mr. VandeHei said, is to carve out an even bigger place in the news media landscape. ?We?re trying to take a leap forward in front of everyone else.?

Talking Points Memo, a political site that has been around since 2000 but only became a force outside Washington in the last few years, plans to expand its reporting staff to 15 people. In 2008, it had only one full-time reporter and an intern assigned to the campaign. According to the site?s founder, editor and publisher, Josh Marshall, the goal is to create a bigger name for the blog by competing with newcomers like Politico and more traditional news outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times.

In the 2004 campaign, Mr. Marshall said, ?We were sort of a player.? By 2008, the site had become ?a small but significant player,? he said.

But now, he said with a sense of pride, ?We?ve already got reporters assigned to different campaigns.?

?It?s an entirely different game for us.?

RealClearPolitics plans to more than double the number of reporters covering the 2012 campaign to at least six and possibly eight, according to John McIntyre, the Web site?s chief executive and co-founder.

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Bit-Gamer Competition #5

Bit-Gamer Competition #5

Posted on 28th Jan 2011 at 11:38 by Joe Martin with 3 comments

In the hustle of visiting Paradox Interactive in New York, we sadly forgot to post the winners for our last competition. On the plus side, we've now remembered and can reasonably claim that we're just being fashionably late.

Before we announce the winners of the last competition though, it's time to lay the rules for the new competition.

We've got two sets of prizes on offer this week, one for those who want to enter via Twitter and one for those who enter via Facebook. What we want you to do is tell us what you think of Sony's new NGP handheld, which was announced yesterday.

You can enter the competition via Twitter by sending a tweet to @bit_gamer or through Facebook by writing a message on the wall of Bit-Gamer's fan page. You can, of course, enter both.


We'll choose one winner for each next Friday, February 4th. If you enter through Twitter then we have a trio of PC strategy games on offer - Lionheart: The Kings Crusade, Commander: Conquest of the Americas and Great Battle Medieval. If you enter through Facebook then you can win Majesty 2, King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame and Mount and Blade: Warband.

Now, as for the winners of the previous competition...Earlier this January we asked you to use the Videogame Name Generator to come up with random video game names and send them to us. We selected three different winners, one from the forums, Facebook and Twitter respectively. The winning entries are below!

Forum Winner: Bloody Manlove Crisis - Fu Manchu
Facebook Winner: Tactical Nudist Vengence - Colin Tye
Twitter Winner: Flamboyant Bible III - @jushodge

We'll be in touch with all the winners shortly!

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Weekend game deals: 20% off all Direct2Drive games

Digital distributors haven't prepared anything too spectacular this weekend, but there's still a few noteworthy discounts. Steam offers The Sims 3 in a massive bundle with five expansions for 50% off their individual price. Strategy buffs may want to pick up a copy of Empire: Total War via GamersGate, while Direct2Drive patrons can enjoy 20% off all games via promo code "wetkitty".

Steam
Penny Arcade Adventures: Precipice of Darkness Combo Pack $2.99 (75% off)
Ship Simulator Extremes $14.00 (65% off)
The Sims 3 Ultimate Bundle $89.97 (50% off)
Fallen Earth: Blood Sports $9.99 (50% off)
LUXOR: 5th Passage $6.99 (30% off)
Breach $11.99 (20% off)

Impulse
Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition $9.99 (50% off)
Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe Edition $7.49 (50% off)
The Guild 2 $7.49 (50% off)
X-COM Complete $5.09 (66% off)
N3V games 50% off
More...

Direct2Drive
Save 20% on all titles via promo code "wetkitty"

GamersGate
A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda $9.95 (33% off)
Darksiders $27.97 (30% off)
Empire: Total War $14.98 (50% off)
Hard to be a God $5.98 (60% off)
More...

Games for Windows
Battlestations: Pacific $14.99 (50% off)

Good Old Games
TopWare Interactive games 30-50% off

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President Is Likely to Discuss Gun Control Soon

The officials did not indicate what measures, if any, Mr. Obama might support; with Republicans in control of the House and many Democrats fearful of the gun lobby?s power, any legislation faces long odds for passage. Among the skeptics is the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada.

Still, Mr. Obama has come under increased pressure to speak out from gun-control advocates, including urban Democrats in Congress and liberal activists and editorial writers. They would like him to at least support a bill that would restore an expired federal ban on the sort of high-capacity ammunition magazine that was used in the Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson that killed six people and injured 13, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona.

The advocates, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, were critical after Mr. Obama did not propose any measures in his State of the Union address Tuesday night to address gun violence. In interviews since, senior White House advisers have said without specifics that Mr. Obama would address the issue in coming weeks, though just how has not been decided.

?I wouldn?t rule out that at some point the president talks about the issues surrounding gun violence,? Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday. ?I don?t have a timetable or, obviously, what he would say.?

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, separately told reporters that Mr. Obama would ?no doubt? speak out before long.

Mr. Bloomberg, who is co-chairman of a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said in his weekly radio address on Friday that he was newly ?encouraged? because ?some of the president?s staff said that he was planning a speech on the problem and on guns and what he would do, and I think that?s great if he does that.?

When several White House aides were asked about that comment, each referred to Mr. Gibbs?s earlier comment.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat of New York who has introduced legislation to ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, said she was hopeful that Mr. Obama would now respond to ?the pressure that?s been coming out from all the different groups and almost every paper I know of.?

Such a ban was part of a broader law banning many assault weapons that was enacted in 1994 by a Democratic-controlled Congress and allowed to expire 10 years later when Republicans were in control. Many Democrats have shied from gun legislation ever since 1994, blaming the loss of their House and Senate majorities that year partly on the assault weapons ban, which enraged the gun lobby, in particular the National Rifle Association.

Ms. McCarthy, who won election in 1996 as a gun-control crusader, three years after her husband was killed and her son injured by a man who opened fire on passengers on a Long Island commuter train, said, ?I don?t see how anybody could get the assault weapons ban passed in this kind of climate with the N.R.A.?

But a ban on high-capacity magazines is possible, she said, adding, ?If I didn?t think I could pass something, I wouldn?t push as hard as I?ve been pushing.?

Mr. Obama supported gun-control legislation as a state senator in Illinois, and as a presidential candidate he opposed laws allowing concealed weapons and endorsed those requiring tougher background checks of gun buyers and a permanent assault weapons ban. But as president he has been a big disappointment to gun-control groups.

A year ago, one of the main groups, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, gave him an ?F? for his first year in office. Its report cited, among other things, his signing of a law permitting people to carry concealed weapons in national parks and in checked luggage on Amtrak trains, and his failure to name a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

?Not only did he not champion the cause, he actually signed bad legislation into law,? said Dennis A. Henigan, vice president of the Brady Campaign.

Mr. Obama recently nominated Andrew Traver, chief of the firearms bureau?s Chicago office, as director of the agency. Mr. Traver immediately drew N.R.A. opposition, throwing his Senate confirmation into jeopardy. And the administration recently proposed rules to require gun sellers in states bordering Mexico to report multiple sales of rifles and shotguns, to stem gun trafficking to Mexican drug cartels.

Mr. Henigan called those actions ?encouraging signs.? He added, ?The White House has certainly been sending signals that it realizes that it can?t go forward avoiding the word ?gun,? which is basically what it did for two years.?

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Obama Cautions Embattled Ally Against Violence

Addressing the nation from the White House after a day of rage across Egypt, Mr. Obama said he called Mr. Mubarak and told him ?to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters? and to turn a ?moment of volatility? into a ?moment of promise.? Declaring that the protesters have universal rights, he said, ?The United States will continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people.?

Mr. Obama?s brief remarks came as a blunt reply to Mr. Mubarak, who spoke to his own people just one hour before and mixed conciliation with defiance as he dismissed his government but vowed to stay in office to stabilize Egypt.

Faced with images of riot police officers using tear gas and water cannons against protesters, the Obama administration has moved from tentative support to distancing itself from Mr. Mubarak, its staunchest Arab ally, saying it would review $1.5 billion in American aid and warning him that he must confront the grievances of his people.

Mr. Obama noted that in Mr. Mubarak?s speech, he promised to expand democracy and economic opportunity. ?He has a responsibility to give meaning to those words,? Mr. Obama said. He called on Mr. Mubarak to open a dialogue with the demonstrators, though he did not go as far as to urge free and fair elections.

Illustrating the delicate balance that the administration faces with Egypt, Mr. Obama referred to the joint projects of the two countries. He also urged the demonstrators to ?express themselves peacefully.?

But the firmness of the president?s comments signaled that the crisis in Egypt had passed a ?critical turning point,? in the words of one senior American official. Regardless of whether Mr. Mubarak survives, this official said, the upheaval has already transformed Egyptian politics and how the United States will handle a leader long seen as a stable anchor in a turbulent region.

The announcement that the administration would review its aid was the first tangible sign that the United States was keeping Mr. Mubarak at arm?s length. The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, declined to give details about the review, except to say that the American ?assistance posture? would depend on events ?now, and in the coming days.?

Egypt is the fourth-largest recipient of American foreign aid, after Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel, and just ahead of Iraq. It is a critical partner on issues like the Israel-Palestinian peace process and a bulwark against Islamic extremism in the Arab world. The administration has also relied on Egypt to give an Arab stamp of approval to Iraq?s fledgling government.

The mushrooming protests confront the administration with one of the most nettlesome foreign policy dilemmas it has faced, forcing it to abandon the careful balance that Mr. Obama and his predecessors have struck between supporting the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people while reaffirming ties with Mr. Mubarak. This same calculation has governed American dealings with other Arab allies led by entrenched autocratic rulers, notably Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

In each case, the overriding concern is that the same people who are clamoring for change could choose leaders who are hostile to the United States, or are even extremists.

Still, standing by Mr. Mubarak for fear of what could come after him could lead to ?resentment towards the United States that could last another three decades, like Iran,? said Martin S. Indyk, a Middle East peace negotiator in the Clinton administration. Laying out the American dilemma, Mr. Indyk said, ?If we don?t back Mubarak and the regime falls, and the Muslim Brotherhood takes control of Egypt and breaks the peace treaty with Israel, then it could have dramatic negative ramifications for American interests in the Middle East.?

The administration also reacted sharply to the Egyptian government?s extraordinary move to shut down the Internet, social networking Web sites, texting and other wireless communications. Mr. Obama called on the government to reverse the steps, which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described as ?unprecedented.?

American officials tried to call the Egyptian Ministry of Communications for an explanation on Friday, but they were unable to reach anyone on a landline phone, said a senior administration official.

At the White House on Friday afternoon, Mr. Obama dropped in on a meeting of his top national security advisers in the Situation Room. The group included Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mrs. Clinton and Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser. During that session, Mr. Obama decided to call Mr. Mubarak and address the American people.

Also on Friday, the State Department issued a travel alert, warning American citizens to avoid going to Egypt, or if there, to stay in one place.

Officials from the Pentagon were consulting with their Egyptian military counterparts, Mr. Gibbs said. The role of the military, officials said, was most likely to be decisive in the coming days ? in particular, if the protests continue and the government orders soldiers to open fire on civilians.

Senior Egyptian military commanders cut short a visit to the Pentagon on Friday and were headed to Cairo as the Egyptian Army was deployed to put down protests in the country?s streets, American military officials said.

The chief of staff of Egypt?s armed forces, Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan, was due to meet this Monday with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and remain with his delegation in Washington through next Wednesday. But as the protests intensified on Friday, he and his group headed for the airport.

On Thursday, Mr. Biden said he did not consider Mr. Mubarak a ?dictator? and stopped short of calling him to step down. He said the Egyptian government should respond to demands that are ?legitimate,? drawing criticism from those who said he was calling their legitimacy into question.

On Friday evening, Mr. Obama avoided the question of whether Mr. Mubarak needed to go. ?Ultimately,? he said, ?the future of Egypt will be decided by the Egyptian people.?

Helene Cooper and Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting.

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Could Cows Make Biofuels Better?

A study of the microbes that allow cows to digest grass could lead to better ways of making cellulosic biofuels.

Biofuels made from agricultural waste, sawdust, and prairie grass promise to be more economical than biofuels derived from corn, sugarcane, and other food crops.

The first step in cellulosic biofuels is converting tough plant materials made of cellulose and lignin into sugars that can then be fermented to make fuels. But this is expensive and currently requires a large quantity of enzymes to break down cellulose. "We're talking truckloads," says Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at Caltech who was not involved with the cow research. "We need a two- to fivefold reduction in the cost of enzymes," she says.

In contrast, the microbes that live in the part of the bovine digestive tract called the rumen have been turning cellulose into sugar efficiently for millions of years. Researchers hope a new database of  28,000 genes sequenced from microbes involved in bovine digestion will help engineers come up with new enzymes, and bring down the cost of making cellulosic biofuels.

So far, manufacturers have brought down the costs of making cellulolytic enzymes mostly by changing processing methods. Another approach would be to make enzymes that work faster or work under different conditions, such as extreme temperatures, that might facilitate the breakdown of plant matter. "To begin to lower the costs of making cellulosic biofuels, we need new enzymes that do more," says Eddy Rubin, director of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. Rubin led the cow-microbe study.

The trouble is that an estimated 99.9 percent of all microbes on earth, including those in cow rumen, cannot be grown in culture in the lab. So bioprospectors looking for natural microbial enzymes with industrial promise have had a very limited pool of material to work with. Fortunately, new gene-sequencing technologies are changing that, allowing researchers to discover microbial enzymes by looking in their genes. Without having to grow microbes in the lab, researchers can sequence all the genetic material present in an entire ecosystem, then screen this data for genes of interest. This type of research is called metagenomics.

Rubin's group started their search for better cellulolytic enzymes by studying termites in 2007. Microbes living in termite guts ferment woody roughage into sugars. The trouble with termites, Rubin says, was that "it was hard to get much material to work with" because termite guts are small. The studies didn't generate many of the full-length genes needed to make working enzymes.

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