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Elements of EA’s Redwood Shores studio, now known as Visceral Games, played a key role in Electronic Arts’ move to introduce an increased number of new properties with the production and release of 2008’s sci-fi horror game Dead Space.

The game was successful enough to warrant two follow-ups (one of these may be the upcoming Dead Space: Extraction for Wii) and a feature film that will be directed by Eagle Eye director D.J. Caruso, Variety reports. The site also said EA will produce the movie alongside Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey.

EA said in July 2008 that it signed on with major Hollywood talent agency UTA as part of an effort to bring more of its games to the silver screen.

Read the rest here-http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24583

BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp warned that cybercriminals have attacked users of its Office software for Windows PCs, exploiting a programing flaw that the software giant has yet to repair.

The world’s largest software maker issued the warning on Tuesday as it released patches to address nine other security holes in its software.

“Despite today’s fixes, Windows users continue to be under attack. Microsoft is taking two steps forward, while attackers are putting it one step back,” said Dave Marcus, McAfee Inc’s Avert Labs director of security research.

Cybercriminals target Microsoft programs because they are so widely used, allowing them to go after the largest number of potential victims with one set of code. (Windows runs more than 90 percent of the world’s PCs. Office has some 500 million users).

read the rest at- http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56D6FU20090714

It wouldn’t be at all surprising if Facebook’s response to the bad vibes elicited its latest redesign were straight out of the 1970 comic war movie “Kelly’s Heroes.” To wit, we give you just one of the refrains from Donald Sutherland’s tanker/proto-hippie character, Oddball:

How happy can CEO Mark Zuckerberg be with the griping by users over the latest Facebook redesign?

Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves…Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

Hopeful, positive comments from Facebook users have been awfully hard to come by in recent days since the powerhouse social-networking site pushed out a redesign that seems inspired, at least in part, by the up-and-coming Twitter service. To pick just one newly voiced opinion from the company’s “Vote on the new Facebook layout” app, which seems in keeping with consensus among the 624,665 comments there so far: “this one is really confusing… the home page look like every one is kinda takin to you!!!!! the previous one was really nice… would feel better if it was changed to the previous version…”

The negativity has continued into the weekend, fueled in part by a Valleywag item alleging that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent an e-mail to employees suggesting that it’s folly for a disruptive company to listen to its customers.

Read the rest at-Faceboks Redesign

US and Russian communications satellites have collided in space in the first such reported mishap.

A satellite owned by the US company Iridium hit a defunct Russian satellite at high speed nearly 780km (485 miles) over Siberia on Tuesday, Nasa said.

The risk to the International Space Station and a shuttle launch planned for later this month is said to be low.

The impact produced a massive cloud of debris, and the magnitude of the crash is not expected to be clear for weeks.

The reportedly non-operational Russian satellite, weighing 950kg (2,094lb), had been launched in 1993, while the Iridium satellite weighed 560 kg and was launched in 1997.

When two such objects collide with such force, the ensuing debris can destroy other satellites, says the BBC’s Andy Gallacher in Florida.

But Nasa said the risk to the ISS and its three astronauts was low as the station orbits the earth some 435km below the course of the collision.

It is hoped that most of the wreckage from the collision will burn up in the earth’s atmosphere, our correspondent says.

Hundreds of pieces of wreckage are now being tracked, reports say, adding to the tens of thousands of objects that are routinely tracked through space.

Some 6,000 satellites have been sent into orbit since 1957.

Tens of thousands of objects are routinely tracked through space

LONDON, Jan. 25 (UPI) — A virulent computer virus has infected more than 15 million computers around the world so far, British experts say.The Independent on Sunday reported that the worm — known as Downadup, Conficker or Kido — had contaminated 6 million PCs in the past three days alone.

The newspaper said more than 3,000 British organizations, including hospitals and the Ministry of Defense, have received the virus.

Officials in Britain, the United States, Russia, China and India say they are waiting to see what the virus’s effects will be, if anything.

The newspaper reported there is a possibility the virus has no function other than to demonstrate its originator’s skill, but some security experts think it unlikely a worm so sophisticated at this one would have no ulterior purpose.

Tom Gaffney, technical manager of F-Secure, says this could be to capture confidential information, such as online account details and passwords. He said it is likely the worm is a “rootkit,” which gives the virus designer administrative access to remote computers.

January 14, 2009 - Xbox 360 gamers can forget about waiting until March 13 to sink their teeth into Resident Evil 5. Instead owners of Microsoft’s system will get a two-level demo exclusively for one week on January 26. The two levels are Assembly Place and Shanty Town and they can be played cooperatively on one system, with AI support, or over Xbox Live with a friend.

Players will encounter the Majini Executioner and the Chainsaw Majini as well as hordes of other infected citizens. The demo also includes the option of using the new “action controls” that are said to be inspired by games like Halo 3. The original Resident Evil control scheme is available as well.

Fans can also look forward to the trailer that was previously only shown at the Tokyo Game Show last year. The video will hit Xbox Live on January 16 with the demo following ten days later on January 26. 

President-elect Barack Obama’s made his pick for NASA head — a decorated military man, according to several reports.

New NASA Head

Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Jonathan Scott Gration, who uses his middle name, is a career Air Force man who’s logged nearly 1,000 hours of combat flight time and been awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Service Medal, among many other awards.

The son of missionaries, he was raised in Africa and speaks Swahili.

Reports said an official announcement would be forthcoming Wednesday. The Obama transition team refused FoxNews.com’s requests to comment on the reports.

Gration is especially close to Obama, having met the young senator in 2005. He and Obama traveled to Africa together in 2006, and Gration has since been one of Obama’s unofficial national-security advisors.

However, unlike current NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, a rocket scientists, Gration has little space experience other than working as a White House fellow in 1982 for then-NASA Deputy Administrator Hans Mark.

Read the rest at-http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479889,00.html

Premium Xbox 360 expected to drop $50 at E3 while Wii stays at $250.

Quite a fuss has been made over the price comparison chart Sony released last week which pitted the PS3 against the Xbox 360 and Wii in a comparison of value. The biggest problem with Sony’s argument is the high price — $400 is a lot of money. A price drop would undeniably be a major boon to Sony’s cause, and Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter thinks a drop may be coming soon.

In a note to investors, Pachter has predicted that the 80GB PlayStation 3 will see its price dropped from $399 down to $299 by April. Pachter added, “Once the PS3 is at a more affordable price point, we think that sales of that device will once again begin to grow.”

But if everything develops as Pachter believes it will, we’ll be seeing Microsoft further drop the price of the 360 at E3 — although it’ll be the premium SKU that sees the drop, not the Arcade — from $300 to $250.

Sony denied the rumor that they would be dropping the PS3’s price in March — a rumor which stemmed along with many others from a purported Sony staff briefing back in November. While plans may or may not have changed since then, we do now know that Sony is expected to post an annual operation loss of roughly $1.1 billion. The loss might imply that Sony isn’t willing to begin bringing in even less money on each PS3 sold, but they also might be looking to jumpstart sales — and there aren’t many better ways of achieving that than a price drop. Read More at-

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/88627-Analyst-Predicts-PS3-Price-Drop-in-April

http://ds.ign.com/articles/944/944483p1.html

Microsoft Corp. said a glitch that apparently disabled thousands of its Zune personal music players was caused by a bug in the device’s internal clock driver.

On Wednesday, Zune owners flooded blogs and Internet chat sites to complain they couldn’t listen to music on the 30-gigabyte version of the Zune, an early version of the device, because it wouldn’t start up properly. The postings noted that the players got stuck with the Zune logo screen and were unresponsive.

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A 30-gigabyte Zune music player shown in brown, black and white

Microsoft initially acknowledged there was a problem with some Zunes and told customers it was working to address it. Later, the company said engineers had identified that the cause of the problem was an issue relating to the way the device handles a leap year.

The issue relates to a part of the Zune hardware, and only affects the 30Gb Zunes, a Microsoft spokeswoman said.

The issue should resolve itself as the device moves to Jan. 1, and should automatically reset by noon GMT Thursday. Microsoft advised customers to let the battery run down on the devices before recharging and restarting.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said even those Zunes no longer covered by warranty should be able to be reset.

Zune Pass subscribers should synch the device to their PCs, the company added.

The 30-gigabyte model, released in November 2006, was the first Zune player from Microsoft, which wanted to challenge Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPod players. Microsoft said it had sold more than 1.2 million of the units when it released updated models the following holiday season.

Read the rest at-

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123074469238845927.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop

 Privacy advocates concerned about a strict new law in Georgia which removes sex offender’s online privacy.

The latest scuffle over online privacy is brewing up in Georgia.  An aggressive new law is set to take effect today which will force sex offenders to hand over their internet passwords, screen names, and e-mail addresses to the government for monitoring purposes.  Several other states also have efforts that track sex offender’s email and screen names.  However, Georgia, which has 16,000 registered offenders, will be the first state to demand the sex offenders’ passwords as well.

A similar law in Utah was already struck down by a federal judge, who ruled that it violated the privacy rights of an offender who challenged it.  However, that ruling was rather narrow as it applied to an offender tried on a military conviction who had never been in Utah’s court or prison system.

Critics of the Georgian law say that it not only violates the privacy rights of offenders, but it also places undue stress on the already tight-for-cash Georgian law enforcement.  Sara Totonchi of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights states, “There’s certainly a privacy concern.  This essentially will give law enforcement the ability to read E-Mail’s between family members, between employers.”

State Sen. Cecil Staton (R.) who wrote the bill argues that it is necessary to strip the rights of some citizens to protect the rights to life and liberty of others, particularly children.  He states that the benefits of the bill, which will allow law enforcement to detect stalking by predators sooner “outweighs a lot of the rights of these individuals.”

He states, “We limit where they can live, we make their information available on the Internet. To some degree, we do invade their privacy.  But the feeling is, they have forfeited, to some degree, some privacy rights.”

Read the rest at-http://www.dailytech.com/Sex+Offenders+in+Georgia+Stripped+of+Privacy+Must+Hand+Over+Passwords/article13832.htm