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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 16 Issue 14
Volume 16, Issue 14 Atari Online News, Etc. April 4, 2014
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2014
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1614 04/04/14
~ The History of Atari! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Windows Start Menu!
~ Typeface Change Savings ~ Snooze Button for Gmail ~ FFXIV Beta on PS4!
~ Firefox Boycott Called! ~ Turkey Twitter Ban Over ~ Xbox Security Bug!
~ Wi-Fi Hotspot Solution? ~ ET Excavation Approved! ~ Mario Kart 8 Showed!
-* Google Wants Glass Trademark *-
-* Mozilla CEO Resigns Over Controversy *-
-* Russia, China Will Not Hijack Oversight! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Another week, more drama. It's getting ridiculous around here, but I'm
still stuck with a lot of personal issues pertaining to family issues.
These problems have been ongoing for over two years now, unfortunately.
Occasionally, I manage to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but,
unfortunately, I still don't have control of the lightswitch. The end
result is that light keeps getting turned off, and I have to start more
work trying to find it again! Not a fun situation.
So, for yet another week, I just can't seem to find the time or real
inclination to comment on a newsworthy subject or two; and there's a lot
going on out there that warrants a comment or three! Again, let's just
get to this week's issue and enjoy what's in store for you all!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - FFXIV Beta on PS4 Open to Everyone This Weekend!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Nintendo Shows Off Upcoming Mario Kart 8!
The History of Atari, Part 2!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
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FFXIV Beta on PS4 Open to Everyone This Weekend
Square Enix has opened up its PlayStation 4 beta for Final Fantasy XIV: A
Realm Reborn to everyone this weekend.
The beta started at 09:00 BST/01:00 PT this morning, and will run until
09:00/01:00 PT on Monday April 7.
The beta will be running on the actual game servers, so it's possible to
join your friends playing the game on PlayStation 3 or PC. Square Enix
adds that any characters created or progress made in this beta will carry
over the full version of the game, which is released on April 14.
To get involved, the 11GB client can now be downloaded from the
PlayStation Store. You'll also have to register an account with Square
Enix to get started.
The successful relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV is one of the main reasons
Square Enix expects to return to profit this year.
Nintendo Shows Off Upcoming Mario Kart 8,
Including the New Rainbow Road Course
If you are a certain age, you spent a lot of your high school and college
years playing your friends in Mario Kart, destroying them at it, and then
screaming in their faces about your dominance.
Well, get ready, because the next chapter of Mario Kart is creeping
closer.
On Thursday, Nintendo previewed the gameplay of Mario Kart 8, the latest
version in the beloved Mario Kart series, in a series of YouTube videos.
Via the official Nintendo magazine, the videos include a bunch of
characters, courses, and power-ups that will be familiar to Mario Kart
fans: the Flower and Mushroom Cups, red and green turtle shells, and an
updated version of the famously difficult final track, Rainbow Road.
Mario Kart 8 will debut for Nintendos new system, the Wii U, on May 30.
You can check out a lot more of the upcoming tracks and features here.
The Wii U has failed to meet Nintendos expectations, lagging badly behind
the new Xbox and PlayStation consoles in sales. Nintendo is hoping to pick
up momentum with games like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
newer versions of games that were popular on older, more successful
Nintendo systems.
With the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 surging, and with companies like
Amazon and Google entering television gaming, Nintendo is in a precarious
spot, driving on the edge of Rainbow Road, teetering above black
nothingness. Well know soon if nostalgia can bring it back to the
winners circle.
World's Fastest 'Ocarina of Time' Player Just Beat His Own Record
What do you do after you break the Zelda: Ocarina of Time speedrun world
record and once again establish yourself as the best to ever play the
game?
For Cosmo Wright, the answer is to set another world record, this time
completing the whole game in 18:51, beating his old record by five
seconds. That was all in pursuit of the theoretical perfect run, which
would be a good twenty or thirty seconds faster.
This category of speedrun is known as any%. A runners goal is to
complete the game as fast as possible by using any glitch or trick at
your disposal. Cosmo has long been one of the best speedrunners in the
world and we named him one of 2013s ten most important people in
esports.
Cosmos goal from here is to break 18:30. After that? More than likely,
hell just keep running faster than anyone else in pursuit of that
perfect run.
Five-Year-Old Boy Finds Xbox Security Bug
Can you imagine the excitement of a 5-year-old kid whos managed to hack
into his fathers stash of video games video games he shouldnt be
playing?
Well, thats exactly what one California boy was able to pull off, and it
sounded something like: Yay!
But dont worry. Dad isnt mad.
Robert Davies learned of his son Kristoffers ability to hack into his
Xbox Live account and actually thought it was awesome.
Just being 5 years old and being able to find a vulnerability and latch
onto that. I thought that was pretty cool, he told San Diegos KGTV.
Kristoffer, who first managed his way past his parents smartphone toddler
lock at age 1, learned that he could reach a back door into his fathers
Live account on the familys Xbox One by simply typing a bunch of spaces
into a password verification prompt. Kristoffers parents asked their son
to show them how hed gotten into Davies account after they noticed that
he was playing a game theyd locked him out of, according to KGTV.
Despite Kristoffers fear that Microsoft might steal the Xbox, Davies,
who works in computer security himself, reported the bug to Microsoft.
The company has since patched the bug and even listed Kristoffer as a
security researcher on its March 2014 list of contributors.
Microsoft is also giving the family four games, $50, and a yearlong
subscription to Xbox Live. Its not quite the bounty that a Brazilian
programmer recently got from Facebook for finding a security bug on its
site (which was $33,500 and a job), but still not bad for an elementary
school student.
Were always listening to our customers and thank them for bringing
issues to our attention, the company wrote in a statement about the fix.
We take security seriously at Xbox and fixed the issue as soon as we
learned about it.
For his next trick, maybe Kristoffer could find us a workaround for
getting a little better in Titanfall. That game is not easy.
Portal and Far Cry 2 Designers Just The Latest
Big Brains To Join Amazon Game Studios
Don't let cyber attacks kill your game! Join GamesBeat's Dean Takahashi
for a free webinar on April 18 that will explore the DDoS risks facing
the game industry. Sign up here.
Earlier, Amazon revealed its new microconsole and a first-party game
exclusive to that device. Now, it has hired a pair of industry veterans
to bolster its development team.
Portal developer Kim Swift and Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking both
joined Amazon Game Studios (and a plethora of Wizards of the Coast
veterans) this month as senior designers, according to their LinkedIn
profiles (as Kotaku first reported). They are working on unannounced
projects that will likely end up on Amazons newly announced Fire TV
set-top box. The Ouya-like Android-based microconsole starts shipping
oday for $99, and it already has an exclusive title in the sci-fi
shooter Sev Zero.
Weve reached out to Amazon to ask what Swift and Hocking are working on.
Well update this post with any new information.
Swifts LinkedIn profile explains that she is working on secret things
for a secret amount of time that no one can know about. After working on
Portal and Left 4 Dead at developer Valve, Swift operated as the creative
director at Airtight Games, which just released the Ouya exclusive action
role-playing title Soul Fjord.
Hocking left Ubisoft in 2010 after developing Splinter Cell and Far Cry 2.
He then went on to work on unspecified projects for LucasArts and Valve.
Swift and Hocking are only the most-recent additions to Amazon Game
Studios roster of talent. In February, Amazon acquired developer Double
Helix, which produced the Xbox One fighter Killer Instinct that debuted
in November.
Amazon has a growing list of industry veterans working for it that
includes a number of former Wizards of the Coast veterans:
Designer Gregory Marques, who helped develop Magic: The Gathering, is
designing products for Amazon now.
Kyle Murray is Amazon Game Studios marketing lead.
Chris Galvin is senior product manager at the studio.
Bill Dugan, who worked on Magic: The Gathering Online and Wasteland at
developer Interplay, is running the games team at Amazon as executive
producer.
Not all of Amazons talent comes from Wizards of the Coast. The companys
game studio also hired author Eric Nylund, who wrote the Halo novels, to
work as its director of narrative design.
So far, Amazon has only provided details for one of its original games,
which is the aforementioned Sev Zero. That game has players controlling a
futuristic soldier as he fights off waves of enemies with weapons and
defensive towers.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
IGN Presents: The History of Atari - Video Game Pioneers
(Part 3 of 4)
In September 1972, Bushnell and co. installed the finished Pong prototype
- made with a black and white TV, an orange-painted cabinet and a lot of
solder - in a local bar called Andy Tapps Tavern, where they had a good
relationship with the owner, Bill Gattis. Pong went down brilliantly with
the guy in a bar audience that had found Computer Space baffling;
people were coming in just to play, without even buying a beer. In one
of the most charming anecdotes in the story of Pong, Alcorn recalls that
after a few days, he was sent to fix the prototype machine after Gattis
called up to say it had stopped working - and found that the coin
receptacle, made from a milk jug, was overstuffed with quarters.
Bushnell took Pong to two manufacturing companies, Bally (with whom Atari
already had a contract to produce a driving video game) and Midway, but
eventually decided that Atari had much more to gain from manufacturing the
unit itself. The challenge was in finding financial backing - and given
that Pong was a bit too close to that insidious, morally-corrupting,
gambling-enabling pinball that was scandalizing America at the time, that
wasnt nearly as easy as it should have been. Eventually, though, they
managed to find credit and get an assembly line together, and though
manufacturing was slow, Pong machines began making their way into the
world by the end of 1972, and started shipping abroad in 1973.
Atari literally had to send representatives to the venues to collect sacks
of quarters by hand.
Pong was a huge success. A single unit was typically earning around $40
a day, Bushnell estimated - in todays money thats $220. Atari was
getting orders for the machines faster than they could make them. 2,500
were ordered by the end of 73, and by 74 over 8,000 machines were in
bars, amusement arcades, restaurants and other places around the world.
Those old yellow cabinets are now sought-after collectors items. Alcorn
estimates only about 12,000 of them were ever manufactured.
Pong brought video games out of the realm of computer science, out of
university labs, and into places where real people congregated. It
brought the idea of a video game to working guys in American dive bars
and British pubs, families at pizza parlours, students and kids at
arcades and in cafes and leisure centers. In a way its the same thing
that mobile games have done for the modern games industry; it bought
huge exposure. It would still be another 5 years before arcade machines
really became a capital-T Thing, when the release of Space Invaders would
really light the fuse for arcade gaming as a commercial and cultural
phenomenon, but Pong paved the way, showing that coin-op electronic games
could be both popular and astonishingly profitable. The home version
arrived in 1975, just in time for the holidays in the USA, where it was
sold through Sears. It sold 200,000 units that first year.
Incredibly, in the early days of Pong, Atari literally had to send
representatives to the venues to collect sacks of quarters by hand (the
venues got 50%, and 50% came back to Atari). Steve Bristow, another of
the companys early employees, was hefting 30 lbs worth of coins
(roughly $600) in bags from bars to his car alongside his wife,
carrying a roofing hatchet for protection.
Pong's popularity spawned many imitators. Photo: Flashback Games.
Pong's popularity spawned many imitators. Photo: Flashback Games.
Its surprising to learn how few Pong arcade machines actually existed,
even at the height of its popularity. Most gamers grew up when consoles
were selling millions. Today its tens of millions. Most probably
imagined that Pong would have at least sold half a million or so. It
turns out that this has a lot to do with an interesting wrinkle in the
Pong story: Atari didnt have a patent for it. In those days, patents
took years to be issued, and Atari didnt file for one until the game
came out in 72. Pong spawned legions of home-entertainment clones -
most people in the Seventies probably became acquainted with Pong
through one of these rip-off systems rather than through Ataris official
home version. But although Atari didnt have a patent, someone else did:
Magnavox, the manufacturers of that first ever home console and its suite
of games, Table Tennis included.
By 1974, Ralph Baer, the inventor of the Odyssey and another of the early
video games industrys formidable entrepreneurs, had managed to persuade
his employer to pursue a lawsuit against Atari, asserting that Bushnell
had copied the idea for Pong from the demonstration of Table Tennis he had
attended in 72 (a signed guest book proved his presence there, and was
later used in the court case against him). How Bushnells company handled
this lawsuit would have a huge impact on their fortunes in the years to
come.
Instead of fighting the accusation in court, Bushnell and Atari eventually
settled out of court for somewhere between $400,000 and $1m (accounts vary
on the exact amount), becoming a licensee of Magnavox. This allowed the
company to continue selling games that infringed upon Magavoxs
wide-ranging patent, which at that time covered pretty much any
player-controlled television game, without actually needing to take other
Pong imitators to court for infringement - it was Magnavoxs patent they
were violating, and so Magnavox was the company that spent vast amounts
of its time and money tracking down and prosecuting immitators. Atari,
meanwhile, could get on with making new things. Even though it could very
well have won the court case, the settlement turned out to be a
strategically better option, since it was Magnavox that ended up spending
time and money fighting Pong imitators, and not Atari itself.
It is undeniable that many of Ataris early achievements were echoes of
things that already existed. Computer Space was functionally very similar
to Spacewar, albeit running on much cheaper and more commercially viable
technology. Pong, despite the fact that its a lot more fun than any of
the tennis games that preceded it, can hardly be called an innovation.
Did Bushnell and co. really invent arcade games, or did they find a way
to make the electronic games that already existed in one form or another
commercially viable?
Ralph Baer, perhaps understandably, is rather dismissive of Ataris
achievements. Mr. B. didnt invent anything, but he started a whole
industry, the arcade video game industry, he said to Buzzfeed in 2012.
Give the man credit for that achievement. He just simply didnt invent
anything.
Bushnells response to the legion of Pong imitators was to push Atari
towards creating newer, fresher products, including Pong sequels and
follow-ups like a four-player variation. The mid-to-late seventies saw
the release of more successful Atari cabinets: Space Race, Tank, Gotcha,
and Breakout - the last of which was commissioned by Alcorn and created
by to two former college students named
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
The duo would leave Atari and form Apple Computer a few years later.
Small world, isnt it?
Ataris overall trajectory was up up up, but this period of Ataris
history wasnt entirely rosy. In 1974 Atari would make a series of major
mistakes. Bushnell nearly bankrupted the company by overreaching with
international expansion, and the disastrously expensive and complicated
racing game Gran Trak 10. According to gaming historian Steve Fulton, the
smash arcade-hit Tank was the game that saved the company - that and a
merger with an Atari sister-company called Kee Games, which was split off
from Ataris main business in 1973 to enable the company to sneakily get
around arcane exclusivity rules that then existed in the arcade
industry.
Microsoft Wins Approval To Excavate Atari's Legendary E.T. Dump Site
The planned excavation of the fabled Atari dump site said to be filled
with thousands of copies of E.T. The Extraterrestrial game cartridges has
overcome its latest hurdle.
According to Alamogordo News, The New Mexico Environment Department has
granted approval for the dig having previously blocked previous plans,
claiming they were "too vague". There were also concerns that the ground
held certain chemicals found to exceed federal thresholds.
Xbox Entertainment Studios, Fuel Entertainment and LightBox Entertainment
however will now be able to dig up portions of an old Alamogordo landfill
to search for the game cartridges, believed to have been dumped there
after the title's catastrophic failure which nearly single-handedly
destroyed Atari.
The NMED has asked to be notified five working days in advance of any
excavation and the companies must register as certified or commercial
haulers of waste before they can start the dig.
News of the dig first emerged last year when film company Fuel
Industries, which plans to document the whole excavation, was granted
permission by Alamogordo to dig up the landfill site, which has remained
buried since 1983. It was believed that Atari dumped 14 truckloads of
discarded cartridges and computer equipment into the area, and covered
the landfill over with concrete.
The company has around six months to excavate the land and find the game
cartridges, if they exist.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
ICANN Chief: Russia, China Will Not Hijack Internet Oversight
The head of a nonprofit that manages the infrastructure of the Internet
defended on Wednesday the U.S. government's move to cede oversight of the
body, and downplayed concerns that Russia, China or other countries could
exert control and restrict the web's openness.
The Obama administration last month said it would relinquish oversight of
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which
controls the "address book" of the Internet, the master database of
top-level domain names such as .com and .net.
It also helps keep order of the web by managing the numeric addresses that
are assigned to each web address to ensure users find proper content when
they look for websites.
The United States, which gave birth to the Internet, has overseen the
process but since 1998 has contracted it out to ICANN. Since then, the
Department of Commerce has planned to phase out its stewardship and has
taken many steps toward that.
The U.S. contract with ICANN will expire in September 2015, and last month
the Commerce Department said it plans to formally turn the oversight
capacity, which it says has become symbolic, over to a global
multi-stakeholder mechanism that the ICANN community will propose.
The plan has provoked a backlash among some conservatives and other
critics who say it may allow countries interested in limiting their
citizens' access to some information on the web, such as China or Russia,
to use ICANN as a venue to push for more restrictive Internet governance
policies.
On Wednesday, the head of ICANN said the multi-stakeholder model - with
governments, the private sector and other interested parties reaching
consensus with equal power - will continue to restrain countries seeking
to limiting the web's openness and freedom.
"Everyone is focused on these three, four countries ... but in between we
have 150 other countries that value the same values we do," ICANN's chief
executive, Fadi Chehadé, said in an interview after a congressional
hearing.
"Our commitment to the multi-stakeholder model is not so much for the
few who do not believe in it, it should be to the great middle mass that
would like to see us stand by it and they will stand with us. This is
the bet we need to make."
Assistant Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Strickling also defended the
move at the House of Representatives' communications and technology
subcommittee hearing.
"No one has yet to explain to me the mechanism by which any of these
individual governments could somehow seize control of the Internet as a
whole," Strickling said.
"Do you really think that (Russian President) Vladimir Putin ... can't
figure out some way to get control? China and Russia can be very
resourceful," Louisiana Republican Representative Steve Scalise fired
back.
"The multi-stakeholder model, it stops them," Chehadé told lawmakers in
response. "I agree that people will talk about capturing (control of
ICANN), but they haven't. For 15 years ICANN has operated without one
government or any government capturing the decision making."
Other governments have recently pressed for the United States to formally
shed its stewardship over ICANN in the wake of disclosures from former
U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. Documents he released showed
that U.S. intelligence officials scan vast amounts of Internet traffic.
The move was welcomed by various technology companies and consumer
advocacy groups, but faces a political backlash.
Three House members have introduced legislation that would prevent the
Commerce Department from shedding stewardship of ICANN's work before
Congress reviews a nonpartisan study of what the move would entail.
In the meantime, ICANN is deliberating on how to set up a new oversight
mechanism, which U.S. officials promised would not be limited to
governments.
Discussions began last week at ICANN's meeting in Singapore, and the
output from those talks is expected to be publicly posted for further
comment on April 7, Chehadé said.
Both he and Strickling pledged to not rush the process.
"If we don't get this right, there's a whole world of damage that could
be done," Chehadé said in the interview.
"If we finish it in 18 months, great. If we don't, then you know what, it
doesn't matter, let's get it right."
Turkey Lifts Ban on Twitter
Turkeys telecoms authority lifted a 2-week-old ban on Twitter on Thursday
after the Constitutional Court ruled the block breached freedom of
expression, an official in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogans office said.
Access to Twitter was blocked on March 21 in the run-up to local
elections last Sunday to stem a stream of leaked wiretapped recordings of
senior officials that had appeared on the site, prompting Erdogan to say
he would root out the network.
Turkeys Official Gazette on Thursday morning published the
Constitutional Courts ruling from Wednesday, further piling pressure on
the telecoms authorities to lift the ban, which had faced widespread
international condemnation.
The ban has been lifted the official from Erdogans office told Reuters
by telephone minutes after TIB removed court orders blocking the site
from its web page.
Googles video-sharing website YouTube remains offline in Turkey, TIB
having blocked it one week after blocking Twitter. Legal challenges
against the YouTube ban are pending.
After the courts decision, President Abdullah Gül, who has opposed the
bans, was quoted as saying both websites should be made available in
Turkey once more. San Francisco-based Twitter said in a tweet that it
welcomed the ruling.
Within minutes of the ban being lifted, the microblogging site was flooded
with messages, with one tweeter saying, Welcome back to Twitter, Turkey.
Others inside the country complained that they were still unable to
access the site.
The lifting of the ban means that TIB will instruct Turkeys Internet
providers to unblock access to the site, a process likely to take several
hours.
Erdogans critics saw the ban as the latest in a series of authoritarian
measures to crush a corruption scandal that had grown into one of the
biggest challenges of his 11-year rule.
Tech-savvy Turks quickly found work-arounds, with Internet analysts
reporting a surge in tweets since the ban was imposed, but the issue has
become a tug-of-war between Erdogans administration and the
microblogging site.
The U.S. State Department responded to the court ruling by urging Ankara
to respect the decision and end the blockage.
Erdogan has repeatedly dismissed the leaked tapes which point to
wrongdoing by officials and members of his inner circle as fabrication
and part of a political plot against him.
His Islamist-rooted AK Party emerged far ahead of rival parties in
municipal elections on Sunday that had become a referendum on his rule.
Dating Site OkCupid Calls for Firefox Boycott over CEOs Anti-Gay Rights Views
OkCupid.com, the popular online dating site, called for a boycott of
Mozilla Firefox to protest the worlds No. 2 web browser naming a gay
marriage opponent as chief executive.
OkCupid visitors who accessed the website through Firefox on Monday were
told in a message to use other browsers such as Microsofts Internet
Explorer or Googles Chrome.
Mozillas new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay
couples, the message said. We would therefore prefer that our users not
use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.
Especially in the kind of modern hero culture, the CEO is equivalent to
the company, said Christian Rudder, an OkCupid co-founder. We have
users who are trying to find other people, and we wanted to point out
that this browser might be in conflict with their own values.
The nonprofit Mozilla Foundations appointment of Eich as CEO on March 24
has attracted criticism from software developers, including some
employees who have publicly called for Eichs resignation on social
media.
Eich, the inventor of the programming language JavaScript and a Mozilla
co-founder, donated $1,000 in 2008 in support of Californias
Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state until it was struck
down by the Supreme Court in June.
Eich has in recent days apologized for the pain he caused with his
personal political views while vowing to uphold a culture of equality as
CEO, including maintaining Mozillas health benefits for same-sex couples.
OkCupids move caught Mozilla by surprise.
No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights
and to be treated equally, a Mozilla spokesman said. OkCupid never
reached out to us to let us know of their intentions, nor to confirm
facts.
Three out of six Mozilla board members resigned late last week, which the
company said was not related to Eichs views on gay marriage. The board
was divided over whether to bring in an outsider to helm Mozilla versus
Eich, who had been serving as interim CEO, The Wall Street Journal
reported.
Mozilla CEO Who Backed Anti-Gay Marriage Law Resigns after Controversy
Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, whose support for Californias anti-gay
marriage law Proposition 8 ignited a controversy for the Firefox maker,
has resigned.
Mozilla announced the move in a blog post.
Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this
past week, we didnt live up to it, Mitchell Baker, the executive
chairwoman of Mozilla, wrote. We know why people are hurt and angry,
and they are right: Its because we havent stayed true to ourselves.
Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. Hes made
this decision for Mozilla and our community.
Eich, who founded the programming language JavaScript and cofounded
Mozilla in 1998, was named Mozillas new CEO on March 24. It was soon
revealed that he provided financial backing for Prop 8, inciting calls
for his resignation on social media, as well as a noteworthy protest from
dating site OkCupid. Eich had defended the $1,000 donation in interviews,
saying that his politics did not affect how he would perform as CEO.
Mozilla has not chosen a successor for Eich; Baker wrote that there would
be new information on that front next week.
Mozillas full announcement is below.
Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past
week, we didnt live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and
they are right: its because we havent stayed true to ourselves.
We didnt act like youd expect Mozilla to act. We didnt move fast enough
to engage with people once the controversy started. Were sorry. We must
do better.
Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. Hes made this
decision for Mozilla and our community.
Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is
necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for
equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be
hard.
Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We
welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture,
ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation,
geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for
all.
We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness
extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and
opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most
organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed
to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.
While painful, the events of the last week show exactly why we need the
web. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to
make the world better.
We need to put our focus back on protecting that Web. And doing so in a
way that will make you proud to support Mozilla.
Whats next for Mozillas leadership is still being discussed. We want to
be open about where we are in deciding the future of the organization and
will have more information next week. However, our mission will always be
to make the Web more open so that humanity is stronger, more inclusive
and more just: thats what it means to protect the open Web.
We will emerge from this with a renewed understanding and humility our
large, global, and diverse community is what makes Mozilla special, and
what will help us fulfill our mission. We are stronger with you involved.
Thank you for sticking with us.
Google Trying to Trademark The Word 'Glass,' But U.S. Hasn't Said 'OK' Yet
Still struggling to make a good name for itself with a skeptical American
public, Google Glass is now struggling to get its literal name approved
by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. The Wall Street Journal reports
that the trademark office is pushing back against Googles plan to
trademark the single word Glass for its wearable computerized
eyeglasses.
Google already has legal claim to Google Glass, but two issues are
holding back the plans to trademark Glass. For one, the term is too
similar to other products and so could cause confusion among consumers.
And secondly, the word is merely descriptive of the actual product.
You couldnt trademark the word shoe for a shoe youre selling, for
instance, the Journal notes. The trademark offices letter argues that
Google Glass is made of glass, and so therefore it cant be trademarked.
Not so, Google responded in a 1,928-page letter. Google Glass in fact has
no glass in it, and is instead made of plastic and titanium, Googles
lawyers wrote, presumably high-fiving and yelling LAWYERED while typing
the response. The majority of that letter consisted of media references to
Googles product as Glass, as the company argues that the computerized
eyeglasses have already become an established part of the culture and
market. No final decision has yet been made by the trademark office.
New Tech Could Put An End to Overcrowded Public Wi-Fi Hotspots
Chipmaker Qualcomm announced on Thursday that it would support MU-MIMO
(multi user-multiple-input multiple-output) in its upcoming network
equipment and mobile chipsets, according to PC World. Simply put, this
means that we will hopefully soon run into fewer overcrowded public Wi-Fi
signals.
Right now, public Wi-Fi signals can easily be overwhelmed with hundreds
of users and can lead to an extremely slow Internet connection or none at
all. As PC World explains it, wireless access points use short time
slots to communicate with only one user at a time. With MU-MIMO, access
points will be able to communicate with multiple users at a time,
potentially increasing speeds to 600 Mbps.
In our case the network can talk to three clients at a time, so
effectively it has a two to three times capacity improvement, Todd
Antes, vice president at Qualcomm Atheros, told PC World.
To take advantage of MU-MIMO, both the access point and the mobile device
need to support the new technology. Right now, Qualcomms Snapdragon 801
processor supports MU-MIMO, which is behind the HTC One (M8) and the
Samsung Galaxy S5. However, a software update is needed to activate
MU-MIMO. Qualcomm will also support MU-MIMO in Snapdragon 805 processor.
Qualcomm competitor Quantenna also supports MU-MIMO, and its chip has made
it into an Asus router already. The Wi-Fi Alliance will begin testing
MU-MIMo later this year or early next year to ensure that MU-MIMO chips
are interoperable with each other.
Microsoft Is Bringing The Start Menu Back to Windows
Microsoft is taking things back to the Start.
At its BUILD Developers Conference in California on Wednesday morning,
Microsoft announced that it is bringing back the Start menu in a
forthcoming update to Windows. Though Microsoft would not say when,
exactly, the Start menu will return, a portfolio of changes is coming to
Windows on April 8, designed to make Windows easier to use for those
operating with a mouse and keyboard.
The re-addition of the Start menu is not expected to be part of that
update. We know its coming, but not when.
You can see a screenshot of the new Start menu below. It has the familiar
column of applications and folders, as well as a column of Microsofts
live tiles, a new feature in Windows 8 that presents applications as
big, touchable squares and rectangles, optimized for tablets,
smartphones, and other touchscreen devices.
Windows 8 was originally intended to help Microsoft compete against the
iPad and Android tablets by optimizing the operating system for
touchscreens. And when Microsoft released the first version of Windows 8,
many longtime Windows fans grumbled when it arrived without the familiar
Start menu. Windows 8 originally split the experience of using Windows
between two screens: a Start screen, which was stuffed with those live
tiles, and the more familiar desktop view, which lacked the Start button.
The Start menu was effectively replaced by a screen of live tiles, which
you could access by pressing the Start button.
Though hypothetically helpful for those with touchscreen devices, this
proved confusing and unintuitive to many who had upgraded from Windows 7.
In general, Windows 8.1 features updates that will make it work better
with a mouse and keyboard, perhaps foreshadowing an even starker overhaul
with next years Windows 9. When you start up Windows 8.1, it will load
the desktop view (with the Start menu), instead of the live tile view.
You will also have the option to add that bottom taskbar to the live tile
view, so that you can always find the Start menu, no matter where you are.
The Windows 8.1 update will be available on April 8 as a free download for
Windows 8 device owners. Well update you when the Start menu makes its
triumphant return.
Google Is Reportedly Testing A Snooze Button (And More!) For Gmail
An email comes in. Its important. Not like,
oh-god-drop-everything-or-well-all-die important, but its something you
should probably answer.
But youve got stuff to do right now, so you dont. Ill answer this
tomorrow, you tell yourself.
By tomorrow, the email has dropped down to the bottom of your inbox,
replaced by 100 way less important things. Youd still answer it
if you
hadnt totally forgotten about it.
It happens to the best of us.
Back when Mailbox (now owned by Dropbox) launched in January 2013, their
solution to this the ability to snooze an email to have it resurface
at the top of your inbox was one of its most exciting features.
Now, it seems, Gmail wants in on the snoozin.
According to Geek.com, Google is testing a build of Gmail with a bunch of
neat new tricks packed in, email snoozing included.
Also in testing, according to the report:
More tabs for sorted emails. In addition to the
Social/Promotion/Forum/Updates tabs already found in Gmail, theyre
purportedly dabbling with tabs for Travel, Purchases (order
confirmations, receipts), and Finance (banking stuff).
Email pinning, to force an email to stick to the top of your inbox
until you decide to unpin it. (Note the pin icons next to individual
emails in the screenshot above.) If snoozing is like hitting the snooze
button on your alarm, pinning is letting the alarm blare in your face
until you eventually get out of bed. Itd also be particularly handy for
emails you know youll need to reference frequently, like one with an
important address in it.
This sort of thing is why it was quite good that Mailbox sold when they
did. As nifty as many of Mailboxs features were/are, it was only a matter
of time before the big guys got around to copying all of the best bits
they could manage.
14-Year-Old Says Different Typeface Could Save
U.S. Government $136 Million Per Year
Even in a world thats quickly going digital, printing is still a
necessity, and ink is costly. So costly, in fact, that it is more
expensive per milliliter than oil, champagne, or any designer perfume.
Now, 14-year-old student Suvir Mirchandani may have come up with an
ingenious way of cutting back on printing costs, simply by swapping Times
New Roman for Garamond, which he said uses 30 percent less ink.
A favorite font of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a special Apple
version of Garamond was the companys typeface for nearly 20 years, the
font for advertising, brochures, and manuals and its iconic Think
different campaign and strapline. But as well as being a more
aesthetically pleasing alternative to other serif typefaces, Garamond
actually weighs less, too.
Mirchandanis discovery started out as a science fair project aimed at
highlighting potential savings at his own school, but it quickly morphed
into a research paper published by the Journal of Emerging Investigators
applying his findings to the U.S. government.
In it he detailed how the use of Garamond, instead of Century Gothic or
Times New Roman in the governments own printed literature could result
in savings of $136 million a year roughly 30 percent of the
governments annual ink costs ($467 million).
To reach his conclusions, Mirchandani used APVSoft APFill Ink Coverage
Software to calculate how much ink was being used with each typeface.
However, in his initial research into his own schools ink use, he went
as far as to print individual characters in different typefaces on paper
and then weigh the sheets to check how much ink was used in each case.
The prominent design site Fast Company Design is pushing back against
Mirchandanis analysis, arguing that switching to Garamond would, in
fact, save nothing.
Why Garamond Won't Save The Government $467 Million A Year
A 14-year-old's plan to save the U.S. government almost half a billion a
year is too good to be true. Font nerdery ahoy!
Last week, media outlets from CNN to the Economic Times reported on a
story that pretty much everyone could feel good about: a 14-year-old font
nerd in Pittsburgh crunched some numbers and figured out how to save the
U.S. government nearly half a billion dollars a year, just by printing
all of its documents exclusively in the light-stroked typeface Garamond.
One problem: There's very little reason to believe that Garamond would
save the government any money at all.
First, let's look at how Mirchandani arrived at his conclusions. For his
middle-school science project, Mirchandani measured four different
fonts - Times New Roman, Garamond, Comic Sans, and Century Gothic - and
discovered that Garamond's thin, light strokes resulted in a font that
required 24% less ink. Given that printer ink is twice as expensive as
Chanel No. 5, it stands to reason that if government officials switched
to a less wasteful font, they could save a lot of money: as much as
$467 million per year if both federal and state agencies got on board,
according to his paper published in the Journal of Emerging
Investigators. Except that it isn't that simple.
At The Same Size, Garamond Doesn't Actually Use Less Ink Than The Other
Fonts
Mirchandani is only 14, so he can be excused for not understanding this
weirdo oddity of the way fonts are measured, but the biggest issue with
his argument is that he measured Garamond at the wrong size! Therefore,
the ink cost savings of switching to Garamond is largely imaginary. Type
expert Thomas Phinney has a great post explaining why, but we'll do our
best to present it in more layman-friendly terms here.
"The cost savings of switching to Garamond is largely imaginary."
Fonts are traditionally measured in a system called points, with one point
corresponding to 1/72nd of an inch. This is true in both physical and
digital printing. Rationally, then, it seems obvious that a 12-point font
should be 1/6th of an inch tall, when printed. But the reality is much
different. There is no guarantee that when you print out a font at
12-points that the letters will be 12-points tall. Only the line which
the letters will be printed on will be 12-points tall.
These fonts are nominally all the same size. Why is Garamond the least
legible? Because it's smaller.
Imagine that you have a metal block for a 12-point letter "l." When you
dip this block in ink for printing, the raised "l" will end up rubbing
off on a piece of paper, but depending on how that "l" was designed, it
is unlikely that it will actually be 1/6th of an inch tall. The 12-point
measurement instead refers to the size of the type body - the flat metal
part of the type that never touches ink.
What makes a 12-point font a 12-point font, then, has nothing do with
ink. It's invisible on the page. This means that, depending on how a
typeface is designed, some fonts at 12 points will be physically smaller
(and therefore less readable than others at the same size. You could, in
theory, have a 12-point font with letters that were almost invisible to
the naked eye, but that wouldn't make it a more efficient font when it
comes to ink savings or readability.
This is the major trap Mirchandani fell into. Garamond's letters are
significantly smaller at the same font size than those of Times New
Roman, Comic Sans, and Century Gothic. As Phinney notes, in fact,
Garamond is about 15% smaller than the average of the fonts that our
plucky 14-year-old compared it to, which translates into a 28% savings
in surface area--pretty close to Mirchandani's alleged 24% savings in
ink.
What this all means is that if you printed any of the other fonts to
match Garamond's actual size, you'd get almost the same savings in ink
cost, at the same expense of readability. Garamond doesn't really use
less ink than Times New Roman, Comic Sans, or Century Gothic: it's just
the equivalent of a 10-point font rendered on a 12-point line. And sure
enough, if you look at Mirchandani's sample text, Garamond looks like it
has been rendered at a much smaller point size than the other fonts;
it's obviously harder to read.
"If you printed any of the other fonts to match Garamond's actual size,
you'd get almost the same savings in ink cost."
Not All Printer Ink Is As Expensive As Chanel (Especially For The
Government)
But let's say Mirchandani is right, and that Garamond does use less ink
than other fonts. Would it really end up costing the government less
money? At first blush, the answer seems obvious. We're all annoyed by how
expensive printer ink is. In fact, at a cost of $4,285 per liter, it's
almost double the cost of even the most expensive perfumes on Earth. If
the government could use less of this valuable resource, it should save
massive amounts of money.
Right? Well, no. And there are a few reasons.
For one, while printer ink is undeniably a racket, it's largely a
consumer racket. The government doesn't pay for ink the same way we do.
Rather, like many offices, it strikes deals with outside companies that
charge per page printed, regardless of how much ink or toner is used.
This means that a U.S. government printer used to print out a color
photo costs exactly the same amount as a blank sheet of paper with a
single letter typed on it.
"The government doesn't pay for ink the same way we do."
Second, inkjet printer ink may be how most consumers print at home, but
the government supplements inkjets with laser printers, which use toner.
Toner costs about half as much as printer ink per page, but Mirchandani's
study assumes they cost the same.
In addition, the bulk of the U.S. government's printing is done on the
printing press - printing out W-2 forms, pamphlets, and the like - not
office laser jets or ink jets. Press printers have a vastly different
economy than inkjet printers: they aren't charging based upon the number
of gallons of ink used, but based upon the complexity of a given page's
layout, and definitely not at a price of $4,285 per inky liter.
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In short? Just cutting down on the ink that a font uses cant
substantially reduce the governments printing budget. The whole study
assumes the government prints all of its documents like someone's grandma
printing out birthday cards on a cheap HP inkjet. In reality, though, the
government mostly pays per page, either through service contracts or on
printing presses.
Conclusion
Using less ink might cost the government slightly less money, but it's
not going to come from switching to Garamond. Garamond's letters are
smaller at the same height as other fonts, making it less legible at the
same size when printed out. And even if the government did switch to a
font that maintained legibility at the same size as Times New Roman
while using less ink, the government would likely not save much money by
switching to it.
=~=~=~=
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