Sony's Blu-ray won the battle of high-definition DVD formats, but its PlayStation 3 gaming console has been losing the war over networked home entertainment. That will change this summer, promised Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, during a Tokyo press conference announcing new PS3 services for the U.S. market.

Sony will roll out on-demand movies and TV shows for download via the PS3's broadband-enabled PlayStation Network. It will also launch Life With PlayStation, offering news headlines and weather information with a spinning-globe user interface reminiscent of Nintendo's Wii News.

Sony has lost more than US$3 billion on the PlayStation 3 since its launch, but additional networked services and cost-trimming will bring the PS3 business unit to profitability by March 2009, said Hirai. "Sony said the things they needed to say," Gartenberg remarked. "What Sony has found in this generation was a Microsoft that was much stronger than it had been the last time around. It came to market a year ahead (with the Xbox 360) and didn't squander that year. At the same time, it's facing a revitalized Nintendo, which was the last thing everybody was expecting. All of this is putting tremendous pressure on Sony."

Sony Gives PS3 a Shot of Adrenaline: Movies and a Twirling Globe

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed. If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

Hundreds of new domain names could be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future. Icann says any string of letters can be registered as a domain, but there will be an independent arbitration process for people with grounds for objection.

".meme"?

Icann & Top Level Domain Names - 'Shake-up' for internet proposed

TAKANEZAWA, Japan - Honda's new zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell car rolled off a Japanese production line Monday and is headed to southern California, where Hollywood is already abuzz over the latest splash in green motoring. The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the gases believed to induce global warming. It is also two times more energy efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a standard gasoline-powered car, the company says.

Honda expects to lease out a "few dozen" units this year and about 200 units within a year. In California, a three-year lease will run $600 a month, which includes maintenance and collision coverage.

Honda rolls out new zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell car

BMW GINA Light Visionary Model revealed

WASHINGTON (AP) - John Dunbar:
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday his agency has all the authority it needs to prevent Internet service providers from discriminating against Web surfers and that new legislation is unnecessary.

The FCC has conducted two hearings on "network management" following admissions by Comcast Corp. that it sometimes delayed file-sharing traffic for subscribers as a way to keep Web traffic flowing.

Large network owners like cable and telecommunications companies are opposed to network neutrality legislation, saying it would add a layer of regulation that will hurt consumers. They say it is unnecessary and amounts to a solution in search of a problem.

So, exactly how will consumers be hurt?

Dunbar:
The hearing included some star power, with the appearance of Justine Bateman, best known for her role on the TV sitcom Family Ties. Bateman is now a founding partner of a new online media venture.

Did I read that correctly? "Star power"?

Network Neutrality - Senators debate future of Web

Everyone knew it was coming, they just didn't know when. Well, now we know: On April 15th, Sony will issue firmware version 2.3, which will add support for the DTS-HD Master Audio (MA) and DTS-HD High Resolution (HR) to the PlayStation 3 (PS3). In combination with the recent BD-Live firmware, this allows the PS3 to play all Blu-ray titles at their optimal functionality.

Fox and New Line exclusively use the DTS-HD MA format on their Blu-ray releases to ensure a "master quality" reproduction of the sound. Similar to Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA takes the audio directly from the master and compresses it in a way that maintains the same audio fidelity in a much smaller file size. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, and PCM are considered the ultimate way to experience a film soundtrack.

Brian Towne, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Consumer Division at DTS commented, "We are extremely pleased that Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) is adding the full spectrum premium DTS-HD Master Audio codec into the PS3 so that more than 10 million owners of one of the best selling computer entertainment systems can have the best sounding, most efficient and flexible audio technology available system as well. DTS-HD Master Audio is fast becoming the must-have feature for high definition entertainment enthusiasts."

PS3 Getting DTS-HD Master Audio Support

PC Magazine
Sascha Segan
March 17, 2008

What is really going to change the way our society works in the next 75 years? Will it be biotech? Quantum computing? Let's place some long bets.

The French railway system makes our poor Amtrak want to hide out in a freight yard somewhere, crying. Guillaume Pepy, the president of the French railway company SNCF, once explained to me why: To build decent infrastructure, he said, you need to have a 50-, 75-, or 100-year plan. With Amtrak constantly fighting for its life a year at a time, of course it's going to decay.

What does infrastructure have to do with thinking green? It's all about planning for the future. Green means sustainable, which means looking beyond short-term goals to see where we want to be in 75 years and how to get there. Otherwise, our environment and society will end up a lot more like Amtrak than like the French TGV.

Before you start mocking that there's no way we can predict or plan based on a 75-year time frame, think about radios, telephones, and highways. We're still working basically with the radio spectrum regulation system set up in 1927. The system of copper wires that gives our homes last-mile connectivity was set up more than a hundred years ago. Car culture is 100 years old. The national highway system you drive on daily was conceived in 1922.

Long-term plans aren't fixed, of course; they change with the times. But they give us goals and a focus beyond just pillaging resources in search of next-quarter profits. In a 1907 issue of Broadway Magazine, writers proposed a long-term plan for the Port of New York. They figured that much of New York's wealth comes from its port, and that by the year 2000 the city would have a population of about 15 million, with 19 million in the metro area. So they proposed moving the port from crowded New York Harbor to a huge new complex on Jamaica Bay.

That's a perfect example of how a 50-year plan can actually pan out. By 2000, New York had 8 million people in the city, but 21 million in the metro area. And much of the city's position as a world hub came from a huge port on Jamaica Bay: JFK Airport, which grew to its present proportions in the 1960s and 1970s.

Unfortunately, our political and economic systems are not designed for 75-year plans. Increased public ownership of companies, the day-trader stock-market culture, and flip-focused investors who want to pump and dump stock make for a society focused on short-term profits. To execute even one 75-year plan, we need a country of investors in it for the long haul. And in the area of tech, we need not one, but four 75-year plans.

The Plans

INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN. Thank goodness for the telecoms' frenzy of the late 1990s. The fiber they laid then gave us a leg up into the 21st century. But we need a serious plan for replacing copper and shoring up network backbones for massively more bandwidth-hungry services than ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

What's Our 75-Year Tech Plan?

AP Friday February 22, 10:56 am ET

Bill Gates Says Microsoft Is Pushing Touchscreen and Speech Technology to Replace Keyboards

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said. "It's one of the big bets we're making," he said during the final stop of a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company's daily operations in July.

In five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard, Gates told about 1,200 students and faculty members Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University. Gates also said the software that is proliferating in various branches of science, including biology and astronomy must become even more advanced. "They're dealing with so much information that ... the need for machine learning to figure out what's going on with that data is absolutely essential," he said.

Microsoft is trying to establish ties not only with university computer science departments but also with reseachers in other scientific areas "to help us understand where new inventions are necessary," Gates said. Gates plans to retire as Microsoft's chief software architect in July and focus on philanthropy.

I hate touch screens, so I guess I'll be one of the last holdouts. "...from my cold, dead hands."

Gates Sees Diminished Role for Keyboards

Ever wonder what that cop is doing in his cruiser that's parked behind your car with lights flashing -- while your heart is pounding and you're searching for your license and registration? Most likely, he's researching you on his laptop, and finding a surprisingly large amount of information. According to Lt. Paul Shastany of the Framingham, Mass., Police Department (FPD), laptops in the unit's 24 patrol cars are the most important recent technology innovation that aids police work.

Backup is especially crucial for police departments, where lack of data can make or break a court case. "We back up everything constantly," Burman says. Once per month, he goes out to the cars and copies report data to CDs. The information is also stored on the department network, and the system is backed up every night onto the town hall network.

For even more redundancy, the police department and fire department run identical Keystone applications on identical servers connected by a fiber-optic network, so each department can back up the other's data. If there's a crash on the FPD server, Burman can change his server's IP address to the fire department's server and the police department is back up and running.

Police tech: How cops use IT to catch bad guys

bold = Stefanie's

from the please-explain-why? dept

Every time you think that the tide is turning and people are beginning to realize the ridiculousness of overly burdensome IP laws, some politicians start doing the dirty work of Hollywood's worst lobbyists. The latest may be the most ridiculous yet -- though, it certainly wasn't unexpected.

Remember how NBC Universal execs started whining about how law enforcement's priorities were all screwed up, since they were focused on pointless things like burglary and bankrobbing rather than copyright violations? That was merely the starting point in a lobbying campaign for the new PRO IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act) bill that has been introduced with backing of both top Republicans and Democrats.

As the bill's not particularly subtle name makes clear, this law is all about giving Hollywood much of what it has been asking for. Rather than decreasing the ridiculous fines that can be handed out for copyright infringement, this law would increase them. But, more importantly, it sets up a brand new gov't agency within the executive branch to help crack down on "piracy." This despite increasing evidence that "piracy" isn't a problem for the economy at all -- but rather a problem for a few big companies with obsolete business models (who just happen to have tremendous lobbying clout) who are too lazy to even bother trying to adapt to a changing market place.

This bill isn't just corporate welfare. It would be creating an entire government agency whose sole job it would be to protect the unnecessary and obsolete business model of a few dying companies while stifling innovative tools and services at every turn. It would help to kill off our creative industries by falsely assuming that creativity needs to be funneled through a few big companies. It's a disgusting travesty of the political process.

Bipartisan PRO IP Bill Turns White House Into Hollywood's Private Enforcement Agency