CirculaFloor robot floor tiles keep you moving in virtual reality

One of the big problems facing VR is the issue of mobility -- how do you allow users unrestricted movement in virtual reality, while keeping them relatively static in real reality? Omni-directional treadmills have been tried in the past, and now researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have developed something called CirculaFloor. The system uses four robotic tiles that constantly shift position, ensuring that there's always a tile in the direction you're headed. Additionally, the entire assembly moves slowly backwards, giving one the impression of movement while they're actually standing relatively still. The tiles also incorporate lifts, for simulating staircases and the like. While this research is promising, there's still plenty of work to be done -- for instance, the tiles still move awful slowly, and while they seem sturdy enough for a leisurely stroll, a Left 4 Dead implementation is not likely to happen any time soon. Video after the break.

By: Joseph L. Flatley,

Satellite Collision May Have Endangered All Future Space Launches

Remember when those two satellites collided the other day? Seems that they'll be the space junk gift that keeps on giving, as their 800-km debris orbiting field could hamper all future space launches.

"Future launches will have to be adjusted with regard to the fact that the debris [from the collision] has spread over an 800-km area and will gather at a common orbit in 5-6 years," said Alexander Stepanov, director of the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg.

According to NASA this massive cloud of human failure joins the 19,000 other objects that currently pollute the low and high orbit space around the planet. As we reported last week, the Hubble Space Telescope is already in danger.

On a related note, anyone who criticized the Pixar movie Wall-E for "liberal bias" or for "unfairly" depicting future humans as slovenly creatures that polluted Earth and space to the point where it was uninhabitable is a dufus. And so ends my personal rant for the day.

from: GIZMODO

Judge pares back Vista Capable suit, no longer class action

On Wednesday, February 18, Judge Marsha Pechman issued an order reversing her earlier decision to grant the collection of various lawsuits against Microsoft and the company's "Vista Capable" campaign class action status. Her decertification effectively ends the Vista Capable lawsuit when discussed as a monolithic endeavor—Microsoft is understandably pleased—but stops short of granting Microsoft the summary judgment it requested.

In her 17-page decision (PDF), Pechman describes the history of the case to date, the relevant statutes and court decisions, and the two motions Microsoft presented for consideration. While the plaintiffs in the case allege that Microsoft's Vista Capable campaign constituted deceptive marketing, the actual (and novel) legal argument was that Microsoft's vigorous advertising campaign around Vista Capable had led OEMs to charge a premium for systems labeled as such. Had these systems simply carried a standard Windows XP logo, the suit contended, they would have sold for lower prices. Although it wasn't part of the legal argument, the class action centered around the idea that Windows Vista Basic wasn't the "real" Windows Vista, and that customers who bought Vista Capable machines found themselves stuck with hardware that did not perform as advertised.

The original request for class certification was based on two points: first, that Microsoft had violated the Washington Consumer Protection Act (CPA) or the equivalent in other states, and second, that the company had benefited from unjust enrichment.

In order to qualify as a class action under the CPA, a plaintiff must show that the defendant engaged in an unfair or deceptive act that occurred in the conduct of its main trade, affected the public interest, and injured the plaintiff. The act in question must also be the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury, an act which "in direct sequence...produce[d] the injury complained of and without which such injury would not have occurred." That's a high bar, but Pechman originally granted class action status in her decision last year in order to give the plaintiffs time "to further develop their 'price inflation' theory."

Arrested development

Given the novelty of their argument and the court's stated willingness to allow them time for development, you'd think the plaintiff's would have attacked Microsoft with a full battalion of economic analysis—and you'd be wrong. Pechman notes that cases that alleged economic harm ultimately failed due to their inability to demonstrate how and where that harm occurred, despite having gathered extensive economic data and performed multiple statistical analyses. "Plaintiffs' evidence fails to establish class-wide causation because it does not attempt [to] identify a specific shift in the demand for Vista Capable PCs," wrote Judge Pechman. "Dr. Leffler did not attempt any regression analysis, much less an econometric analysis of the impact of 'Vista Capable' on demand." (Dr. Leffler served as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiffs.)

Instead of attempting to demonstrate class-wide causation, the plaintiffs based their arguments on anecdotes, gathered testimony, and the batch of e-mails Microsoft was forced to release back in early 2008. Leffler attempted to argue that the Vista Capable campaign succeeded based on internal Microsoft documents, but Pechman notes that said documents do not give any hard data on whether Microsoft actually hit any specific targets. Even if it did, there's no accompanying evidence to illustrate that the growth in question was driven solely by the Vista Capable program rather than by holiday discounts, OEM promotions, or a general uptick in laptop sales. It certainly doesn't help that the laptop market has been growing steadily for years, that fact alone could easily have obscured the theoretical impact of the Vista Capable campaign.

Leffler falls equally short when tasked with demonstrating that the Vista Campaign actually had a demonstrable and particular impact on system price. Rather than offering economic analysis, Dr. Leffler relied again upon precampaign discussions within Microsoft itself and sworn testimony from certain plaintiffs. The good doctor ultimately concluded that "fundamental and non-controversial economic principles" imply that the Vista Capable campaign increased the price of applicable systems. Judge Pechman evidently didn't attend the prestigious economic school that discovered these principles, and notes: "It does not appear as if Dr. Leffler tested this assumption against any real pricing data."

Not entirely off the hook

Given that the plaintiffs presented no real evidence to support the continuation of the Vista Capable class action, Judge Pechman opted to decertify the case. She did, however, note that her decision should not be taken as a ruling on the validity of specific individual claims. "While the Court decertifies the class today, it is careful to note that this ruling makes no comment on the merits or veracity of Plaintiffs' individual CPA and unjust enrichment claims. Defendant is mistaken to equate Plaintiffs' failure to provide class-wide proof of causation with a failure to present an issue for trial."

Pechman also dings Microsoft for missing the plaintiffs' point when it defends Vista Home Basic as a valid Vista distribution. "The question is not whether Basic can be called 'Vista' based on computer code similarity or whether Microsoft as a software developer has the right to offer multiple permutations of its product; it is whether Microsoft's use of the 'Vista Capable' designation had the capacity to deceive...In this sense, Microsoft's internal communications raise a serious question about whether customers were likely to be deceived by the WVC campaign." For this reason, the judge opted to deny Microsoft's motion for summary judgment, and will allow individual complaints to to press onward.

The Vista class action lawsuit may be effectively dead, but the suit has been a fantastic success in terms of the information about the run up to Vista's release turned up through discovery. The documents (PDF) Microsoft was forced to disclose were a fascinating goldmine of information, even if they represent just the merest fraction of the thousands of e-mails Microsoft employees and representatives exchanged throughout the development of the Vista Capable marketing program. Thanks to those documents, we discovered how Microsoft first stuck to and then flip-flopped on its decision to require Windows Vista Device Driver Model (WVDDM)-compatible video hardware, why the company made that decision, and how the fallout caused waves within the seemingly monolithic corporation. Of equal interest was the fact that early NVIDIA drivers were substantially to blame for Vista's instability and undoubtedly contributed to the general perception that Windows Vista was buggy, undesirable, and a step backwards from stable, yummy, Windows XP.

By Joel Hruska

Nintendo DSi comes to America April 5

Nintendo announced today that the third edition of its DS handheld video game system will be released in the United States on April 5. The handheld unit was originally scheduled to be released sometime in the summer, but Nintendo decided to push the release date up for gamers.

The DSi has two digital cameras, music player, voice recorder, stereo headphone output, and an SD card slot. Owners will also have the chance to download new video games and applications using WiFi hotspots, though applications will begin at 200 points, $2, with the price going up depending on which game is being purchased.

The DSi will be available for $169.99, and interested consumers will be able to purchase the system in blue or black. Nintendo's DS Lite -- already available in the U.S. -- costs just $130, and is extremely popular among gamers.

The Nintendo DSi has been available on the Japanese market since late 2008, and U.S. consumers have been anxiously awaiting to learn when it would land in North America.

Nokia Unveils Ovi Store, Application Sales To Debut In May

At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Apple’s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move as the rumors about the Finnish mobile juggernaut’s mobile applications store already spread last week; they were late confirmed to Reuters by industry sources.
Here’s how they pitch it:

“Offering a range of content including applications, games, videos, widgets, podcasts, location-based applications and personalised content, Ovi Store will be available on S60 and Series 40 devices. The first device to include the mobile storefront on board will be the Nokia N97, set to launch in June. Meanwhile tens of millions of existing S60 and Series 40 devices will be able to take advantage of the store from May. Ovi Store is unique in its ability to target content based on where you are, when you’re there, why you are where you are and who else has downloaded similar content.”

That last part, as well as the geo-location features, seems interesting. Ovi Store will include what it calls a ’social discovery’ feature which will enable users to find out which content is being used by their social network peers, as they will automatically be highlighted and made available for download on their devices.

Nokia, still the number-one maker of mobile phones until further notice, expects that the store will reach 300 million users by 2012. According to The Guardian, Nokia also said 70 percent of revenues from the store would go back to software developers.

As from today, content publishers and developers will be able to register for the Ovi Store here, but they will only be able to upload starting next month. The application store will be gradually rolled out, starting next May in nine countries.

Could You Go to Jail for Jailbreaking Your iPhone?

There is something deeply exasperating about the debate, spotlighted Thursday, about whether unlocking an iPhone violates Apple’s copyright on the cellphone’s software. There’s a real issue at stake, but it isn’t fundamentally about copyrights.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a filing with the Copyright Office, argues that the government should allow iPhone owners to circumvent technical barriers meant to keep them from changing the phone’s software, a process called jailbreaking. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act bans people from defeating technical protections for copyrighted materials (such as the encryption on DVDs). The act requires the government to consider exemptions to this ban every three years.


Apple, not surprisingly, filed an objection, saying that jailbreaking a phone indeed violates copyright law and that no exception should be granted.

One of the key legal arguments is whether installing software on an iPhone that is not sold through Apple’s iTunes store is an infringement of Apple’s copyright. The E.F.F. argues that it does not and that Apple’s motivation is simply to preserve its revenue from software sales.

Apple argues that its copyright is infringed, in part because its reputation and potential to profit from iPhone sales in the future is hurt because jailbroken phones may be more subject to bugs and security flaws. The copy protection scheme enforces a “chain of trust” that allows Apple to make sure that harmful software does not get onto the phones. Here is a key summary from its argument, which refers to T.M.P.s, or technical protection measures, the software meant to keep people from jailbreaking the phone:

It should be clear that the iPhone ecosystem Apple has built is good for developers, good for iPhone users, good for Apple, and good for the policies underlying the copyright laws to encourage the creation of works of authorship. That ecosystem depends upon the “chain of trust” implemented in the iPhone through its T.P.M.s. The proposed exemption would destroy that chain of trust and threaten many of the benefits the ecosystem affords, and should therefore be rejected.

Stepping back, one of the big issues here is whether Apple has the right to tell people who buy iPhones to use them only in the way it wants them to. Why shouldn’t I be able to run buggy software if I choose to?

But it’s not quite so simple. Jennifer S. Granick, a lawyer for the E.F.F., said that Apple can force buyers of the phone to agree to any conditions it wants to write into a user agreement. But those agreements would be governed by contract law, which would force Apple to sue users and prove actual damages.

Under copyright law, Apple would have the right to claim statutory damages of up to $2,500 “per act of circumvention.” People who jailbreak phones, might even be subject to criminal penalties of as long as five years, if they circumvented copyright for a financial gain.

“Apple is bringing the hammer down in a way that Congress never intended and is really severe for something that is just not wrong,” Ms. Granick said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment beyond its legal filing.

The issue will be decided by the Library of Congress by this fall after several hearings in the spring. This is the exasperating part. It’s hardly clear that the Library of Congress, which does look after copyright law, is the right place for this debate. After all, the copyrighted software is really a small part of a cellphone and not really part of the fundamental issue.

This is an issue that Congress may have to take up. Ms. Granick also pointed out that Congress has from time to time limited the ability of companies to use contract law to limit what buyers of their products can do with them. For example, car companies are not allowed to void warranties for people who chose to have repairs done somewhere other than at dealers. By Saul Hansell