Topping all the charts was Apple’s latest update to its iLife suite, touting major retrofits of iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand. The changes range from a better system for organizing photos in iPhoto to more powerful video editing functions in iMovie to a series of learning tutorials for various instruments in GarageBand.

“iLife continues to be one of the biggest reasons our customers choose to get a Mac,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “With iLife ‘09, we’ve made working with photos, making movies and learning to play music a lot more fun, and iMovie users are especially going to love the advanced but easy-to-use new features.”

Right after the big iLife news hit, Sling Media introduced a real stunner: HD streaming for Macs and iPhones via Sling.com. Sling Media expects to have an iPhone app out soon. Expected release date for SlingPlayer, a downloadable application that will interface with Sling.com to deliver HD content, is sometime in the first fiscal quarter of this year.

“SlingPlayer Mobile is ideally suited for the iPhone’s large touch screen display and I know iPhone users are eagerly anticipating the application’s availability,” said Blake Krikorian, co-founder and CEO of Sling Media.

Following up, a new 17-inch MacBook Pro with unibody construction and a non-removable 8-hour life battery and an optional anti-glare coating on the screen was announced. The computer comes packed with a 2.66ghz Intel Core Duo chip, a 320 GB Hard Drive, and 4 GB of RAM, to name a few updates.

“We’ve developed new battery technology that is better for the user and better for the environment,” said Jobs. “Apple’s advanced chemistry and innovative technology deliver up to eight hours of use on a full charge cycle and up to 1,000 recharges.”

The final move of the day set social networking sites buzzing. Apple announced a new DRM free iTunes with a three tier pricing structure — $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29.

Both moves on the iTunes front were widely regarded as a necessity in order for iTunes to remain competitive with other online music stores, with the DRM removals hailed as long overdue.

Phoenix Technologies latest product, debuting at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, is called HyperSpace. It’s a slick, compact Linux based platform that circumvents the Windows load time by booting straight from BIOS. It installs alongside Windows, and allows the user to switch between the stripped down but aesthetically pleasing HyperSpace interface — which boasts instant web connectivity — and the hard drive based Windows platform at will.

Think of it as a 3G phone version of your laptop.

The boot time for HyperSpace from total shutdown is comparable to bringing a Windows machine out of sleep mode, which is a few seconds. Because the program boots from BIOS, it doesn’t require a spinning hard drive, which saves on battery power by up to 30 percent, according to Phoenix.

HyperSpace boasts a robust security system administered by Phoenix Technologies, disallowing any downloads not cleared by the Phoenix Technology auditing system. For more advanced users, such electronic handholding might not be ideal, but it comes with the package. Time will tell if it’s a winner, but from early glimpses of the system it appears to be a nice solution for those wanting to save on battery power and circumvent hard drive based apps by living online.

The HyperSpace platform starts at $39 for the basic system which runs on single core processors and $59 for the hybrid option which runs on dual core processors.

For Martin Schubert, a 25-year-old doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, discovering a new way of looking at the LED, or Light-Emitting Diode, is going to change the way the world sees. That accomplishment earned him the $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Prize for 2008.

Precisely, Schubert discovered that ordinary LEDs produce polarized light – a lot of it. That means more energy-efficient, compact displays for everyday tech objects. Before Schubert’s find, normal LEDs had never been known to produce polarized light. Schubert, on a hunch, decided to take readings from the sides of diodes, as all other readings were done from the top, and found the previously undetected polarized light literally pouring out. Even senior experts in his field didn’t anticipate that development.

Schubert then created a reflector that directed the light vertically; creating a truly and potentially cheap source of polarized LED.

“Discovering that normal LEDs emitted polarized light at a ratio of 7:1 from the side, that was big moment,” said Schubert. “Shortly afterwards we made a reflector in a certain way so we could use that light. Those were two big moments.”

Why is accessible polarized light with the possibility of cheap manufacture a big deal?
In order to put Schubert’s accomplishment in perspective, an explanation of the way current lighting technology works in such things as laptops is beneficial. In most laptops, the LCD, or Liquid Crystal Display, is sandwiched in, “a stack of thin films,” said Schubert.

First, there’s the source light, which is generally fluorescent and not polarized. From there it goes through a liquid crystal polarizing filter. After that, it goes through a second polarizer, and then the light hits your eyes.

Some of the drawbacks to this method have to do with the lighting source itself, fluorescence, which utilizes highly toxic mercury. Another is that a significant amount of energy is needed to create light that is sufficiently bright to penetrate the polarizing filters.

While the some recent LCD displays have utilized LED as source lights, such as the extremely thin LCD on the MacAir and some high definition televisions, a polarizing filter is still required, adding not only to the overall thickness, but energy consumption.

In creating an LED that’s polarized at the source, the filtering layers are bypassed, leading to greater energy efficiency and a potentially razor-thin display.

“You lose at least 50% intensity starting with unpolarized light,” said Schubert. “Basically, that’s what motivated me to create a polarized LED. I decided a it would be a great thing to have in LCDs.”

While Schubert’s method isn’t the only way of creating a polarized LED light, it is the cheapest and least labor intensive. The reason has to do with two fundamentally different manufacturing methods.

In order to create a single LED, special crystals are first grown using one of two methods, C-PLANE or M-PLANE.

C-PLANE is currently the industry standard, as growing crystals using the C-PLANE method is faster and lower cost. In order for polarized LEDs using the M-PLANE method to become a reality, the entire manufacturing industry would have to convert to that method – an unlikely possibility, according to Schubert.

“One of my limitations when I first started out was that I couldn’t use that sort of esoteric growth technique. That was a self-imposed limitation,” said Schubert. “I would consider this the first practical way to make polarized LED lighting. You can take what’s being made on assembly line today and just change the chipset.”

And the benefits of readily available polarized LED lighting extend beyond LCD displays.

Schubert cited robotic applications as one example. In trying to teach machines to translate visual data in a way similar to the human eye, polarized light is the holy grail, as it is far easier for robots to interpret. Widely available polarized light could lead to cheaply manufactured robots that have high visual acuity, roaming the halls of, say, a hospital carrying medications or charts.

Schubert’s plans don’t stop with polarized LEDs, either. His plans for the future include researching ways to create LED lights capable of enough power for standard home lighting applications. Currently that is not possible, due to what’s known as, “efficiency droop.”

One of the limitations with LED lighting is that after achieving certain brightness, the power needed to increase the level of light increases by orders of magnitude. So, more power can be given to the LED, but the return in brightness drops quickly to levels that make the power input impractical.

He is also interested in developing more efficient Ultra Violet LEDs, as currently UV LEDs burn out at a rate that hinders their use in widespread applications. Long-life UV LEDs would be beneficial in a plethora of applications, from water sanitation, hospital sterilization, to tanning beds.

If Schubert or other scientists solved the efficiency droop issue and created LEDs for standard household lighting, the power savings are potentially enormous: LEDs use 10 percent of the energy of a standard bulb.

“I saw a statistic that 20 percent of all energy consumed in this country is for lighting. If you increase efficiency by switching over to LEDs, you could shut down hundreds of power plants,” said Schubert. “LEDs are also very long lifetime. They almost never burn out.”

And if Schubert has anything to say about it, you’ll never have to change a light bulb again.

Sound familiar, gamers?

In the 1950s and 1960s, critics claimed a new form of mainstream entertainment, comic books, were going to do just that. However, many comic book lovers grew up to be productive members of society, and one even wrote Pulitzer Prize winning novel on the subject.

In the mid-19th century, such criticism was heaped on Penny Dreadfuls — the popular, cheap, serialized stories that young adults, particularly males, devoured. The Penny Dreadfuls were so popular that boys of limited means would band together, pitching their money into a communal pot to buy one issue, which they would then pass around, taking turns until everyone had read.

Today, the same charges have been leveled at video games. From politicians to religious groups to parents associations, the critics have been persistent in their doom and gloom toward the impact of video games on culture.

But there’s a growing body of scientific evidence that says, in some cases, video games are better for you than books.

“New technology and new media have always been met with skepticism and predictions about their adaption and areas of use, but they have rarely been accurate,” said Erik Hoftun, publisher of The Book of Games Volume 1 and 2.

Education, in particular, is one area in which Hoftun feels games haven’t been given their due.

“Of course I am not advocating video gaming as a total substitution for reading,” Hoftun says. “[But] sooner or later, educators are bound to discover the incredible educational potential of video games.”

In The Book of Games Vol. 2, Hoftun illustrates his point with the US state of West Virginia.

West Virginia has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the country. While books, by their passive nature, couldn’t possibly address a problem like obesity, there was no such limitation on video games. West Virginia began offering the popular title, Dance Dance Revolution, as an alternative to standard gym exercises in 157 schools.

The move was a hit, eliciting enthusiastic participation in students who were otherwise apathetic toward physical education.

In another example, The Book of Games Vol. 2 highlights a school in Norway, Vear Elementary, which implemented DDR as an alternative to traditional physical education. They met with great success, according to teachers in the BoG, with the educators going out of their way to note that the children often wrote and performed better in class after the physical activity provided by the game.

These anecdotal examples are backed by research. As cited in the BoG, a study reported on by Reuters followed 50 children between 7 and 12 years old over 24-weeks. Results showed that children who played physically active dancing games for 30-minutes or more per day maintained and even reduced their weight.

And the benefits extend beyond those offered by exercise, Hoftun adds.

“All video games, and adventure games in particular, encourage scientific method of the purest kind. They follow the classic formula of trying something, failing, try something different, and figuring out what works,” Hoftun said. “In scientific terms: Develop hypothesis, test, prove or disprove, adjust hypothesis, test again. So if you want to develop small scientists, get the kids away from their passive book reading, and have them play video games.”

Currently the United States public school system is ranked 18 out of 24 according to a 2003 study done by UNICEF.

In the report, countries such as South Korea, Japan, Finland Austria and the United Kingdom beat the United States. Another study done around the same time, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, gaged the overall progress of the average US student. In the 4th grade, US students rank as well as their counterparts in higher ranked countries. However, by the 12th grade, US students had fallen behind by a significant margin.

James Paul Gee, Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has argued for years that video games would go a long way toward reversing that trend.
“Better theories of learning are embedded in video games than many children in primary and secondary schools ever experience in the classroom,” said Gee in a 2003 interview with The Observer. “If schools want to engage their students in the same way as computer games, they need to drop their snobbish antipathy and begin learning from them instead.”

It’s that easy to bypass the most popular forms of hard disk encryption software. From Windows Vista, to Mac OSX, to various flavors of Linux, it appears that all major operating systems are highly vulnerable.

Conventional wisdom held that DRAM memory was rapidly volatile, causing all of its information to fade as soon as power to a computer is cut. However, researchers with Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science department have recently proved that false.

By tipping the can of air upside down over a laptop’s DRAM chips, the nitrogen gas freezes the chip within seconds. When it’s frozen, the memory can stay fresh for longer than ten minutes — more than enough time to steal the encryption keys that allow easy access to the hard drive’s data.

In their paper, titled, “Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys,” they say, “We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access. We use cold reboots to mount successful attacks on popular disk encryption systems using no special devices or materials.”

The revelation and airtight research have knocked the computer world for a spin, as laptops containing military information to proprietary corporate research are now wide open.
In their paper, the researchers observe that many computers with inefficient cooling systems do not need the benefit of liquid nitrogen at all. The DRAM stays cool enough on its own to simply reboot the computer with the proper access tools.

The researchers end their abstract by noting, “Though we discuss several strategies for partially mitigating these risks, we know of no simple remedy that would eliminate them.”

See also: The New York Times

The programmer of this dangerous piece of code was an eleven-year-old boy.

Using the installer.app feature on the iPhone, users can access the diverse world of third-party applications. The malware in question passed itself off an update at www.jmwiki.com for applications including Erica’s Utilities, OpenSSH, Launcher and Doom. After downloading and installing the file via the iPhone’s installer.app, the malware displayed the word, “shoes” and proceeded to remove files critical to iPhone functionality.

Though by malware standards the virus was fairly tame, McAfee Avert Labs blogger Jimmy Shah noted that the piece of software highlights an important security concern with iPhone, one that depends entirely on the vigilance of well-informed users.

McAfee recommends users only acquire software only from trusted sources and install only official firmware updates.

After the child’s ISP was informed of the problem, his father was contacted and the site hosting the malicious application was taken down.

According to papers unsealed in Detroit, the electronic highwaymen, facing a 41-count indictment, are a geographical grab bag, ranging from Queen Creek, Calif. to Hong Kong to Russia.

One of the alleged scams includes cooked up pump and dump stock schemes for Chinese corporations hungry to score First World dough. In these cases, Americans are told stocks are going to go up, people buy up the stock, and in the end only the company makes money.

According to U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy, it was, “one of the largest illegal spamming and fraud operations in the country.”

The indictment is the culmination of the three-year investigation, in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, and even the Postal Service, all assisted. Not a bad coup for old snail mail.

In 2005 alone, federal investigators estimate that the ring generated $3 million with their scams.

Though it’s unclear how many of the spammers are in custody, and the indictment isn’t likely freeze the torrents of junk hitting your inbox every day, it is a refreshing bit of action from the Justice Department.

It’d be nice to see more of these shots across the bow in the future, and if the Postal Service has anything to say about it, a few more direct hits.

Charged:

• Alan M. Ralsky, 52, of West Bloomfield, Mich.
• Scott K. Bradley, 46, of West Bloomfield, Mich.
• Judy M. Devenow, 55, of Lansing, Mich.
• John S. Bown, 47, of Poway, Calif.
• William C. Neil, 45, of Fresno, Calif.
• Anki K. Neil, 36, of Fresno, Calif
• James E. Bragg, 39, of Queen Creek, Ariz.
• James E. Fite, 34, of Whittier, Calif.
• Peter Severa, age unknown, of Russia
• How Wai John Hui, 49, of Vancouver, Canada and Hong Kong
• Francis A. Tribble, of Los Angeles, Calif.

The deal follows close on the heels of a recent agreement between Microsoft and Facebook that granted the software company the right to place button and banner advertisements on Facebook using it’s nascent adCenter platform.

“Our collaboration with Facebook is about joining our cutting-edge advertising technology and sales force with a true innovator in social networking,” said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “The consumer assets brought to bear by this relationship will be very hard to match.”

After speculating that Microsoft’s move may be wildly out of touch with reality due to Facebook’s inflated valuation, Marissa Gluck, managing partner of consulting firm Radar Research, did grant some concessions to the wisdom of the acquisition.

“Social networking – that’s the flavor of the month, but Facebook goes beyond that. It could potentially be the next operating system,” said Gluck.

And in a world in which Microsoft has watched its MS Office suite quickly lose luster as a lure for the Windows operating system — due mainly to free Internet and open source applications of comparative quality — the company desperately needs a popular online platform that will keep users hooked into its products.

In the past, Microsoft has been notorious for stating, declaratively, that its operating system and applications would never migrate to the Internet. However, the fierce but losing bids for MySpace, and the follow up consolation prize of Facebook, has had commentators speculating that the company might be waking up to the stark reality of its situation: It’s losing market share, and it needs a viable, established, online platform that gives it the ability to compete with Google.

A string of costly, unproven attempts to gain ‘net cred preceded Microsoft’s 1.2% acquisition of Facebook. Namely, the Windows Live search program, a large investment that has failed to measure up to the company’s high hopes. Rather than trying to build a web-brand from the ground up, the move on Facebook is seen by analysts as an attempt on Microsoft’s part to buy into a system that already works.

“Since it is one of the most rapidly growing web properties, this is a landmark deal for Microsoft which was a late starter in the syndicated advertising business,” said David Brashaw, principal analyst at Ovum, a telecoms and software consulting firm.

Though it’s a step in the right direction, and an honest bid on Microsoft’s part to take notes from Internet companies — a learning curve that’s proven extremely steep for the operating system giant — it’s also a something of a speculative play: Facebook, while successful so far, is far from a proven concept. “Facebook…clearly has a way to go in its development, and this is one area that Microsoft may be able to both teach it and learn from it,” said Bradshaw. “[Still], these tools clearly have a long term role in making organizations of the future get far more from their peoples’ skills and knowledge.”

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was Hollywood. At that time, the movie industry was under increasing scrutiny due to violence on the big screen. Concerned politicians, at the behest of clamoring constituents, issued reprimands from the highest levels of government, castigating what they perceived to be irresponsible messages targeted at America’s youth.

Around the mid-1990s, the explosive rise of rap and grunge–two music scenes mirroring the malcontent of youth from two completely different socio-economic backgrounds–stole the limelight, and it seemed that no matter what the new generation consumed by way of entertainment, nothing was safe.

A reactive message disseminated by conservative, religious authorities such as James Dobson, founder of the Christian fundamentalist group, Focus On The Family, was clear: The American way of life was under attack by irresponsible artists spewing messages of apathy, violence and anti-establishment rebellion.

With the exception of a troubling movement within the religious community, wherein some moderate sects gravitated towards more radical leaders, the attempts to bring the country as a whole back to what they saw as a more modest, sheltered, and morally upright lifestyle did little good.

Rock acts like Marilyn Manson, with in-your-face album titles like the divisive 1996, “Antichrist Superstar,” were banned from performing in some cities, but to no effect; in many cases, it simply increased their notoriety and popularity. Rap icons like Dr. Dre, who pounded out tales of guns, drugs, money, and the hard-knock life of discrimination and poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth, were demonized. Some went so far as to call him a latter day Lucifer. In the meantime, his albums smashed sales records, cementing his position in the celebrity firmament.

And Middle America worried.

When the Columbine shootings exploded across the national consciousness like a hollow point round, it seemed that the jury was out. Rock music like Manson and rap stars like Dre rapidly went from contemptible–if harmless–diversions for middle class white kids, to the harbingers of ruin in a corrupt society on its last legs.

The mainstream press did little to quiet the post-Columbine media panic, highlighting the shooter’s fixation with a new video game, radically different than its predecessors, Doom. The game, which today is rudimentary, for the first time incorporated stunning graphics, mass-market appeal and mind-boggling gore. Though it wasn’t the first of its kind–the pioneering first-person shooter was arguably Wolfenstein 3D–suddenly, desperate parents had a fresh battleground from which to crusade against impropriety and misconduct, using the terrifying new medium as a rallying cry. Overnight, Doom–and video games as a whole–went from harmless entertainment to the missing link between otherwise ‘well-adjusted’ suburban youth, and acts of inexplicable, horrific violence.

At the time, little emphasis was placed on the shooter’s underlying sociopathic tendencies, and in large part, that issue is still ignored. Those who found fault with video games rationalized that despite the mental unbalances present in the two shooters, without Doom, they would never have learned to commit such acts of cold-blooded homicide.

Almost seven years later, the verdict is still out. Violence, if anything, has increased in video games.

In less than five minutes, for example, I can turn on my television, stop a police car in the middle of the street, yank the officer out of his cruiser, and beat him to death with a golf club in front of unconcerned pedestrians.

The basic plot I just outlined is Grand Theft Auto, and it’s far more advanced–-both graphically and technologically–-than Doom. And, since its release in 1998, has drawn its own hefty share of criticism not only from conservatives, but from liberals as well.

The debate centers around a vital question: Do violent video games create violent youth, or is violence in society–from isolated acts in the suburbs, to gang shootings at the decaying heart of a city–a problem that is far too complex to simply chalk up to an electronic sliver of the media machine?

According to the standard coffee shop rationale, an increase in violent video games does indeed prompt more violent youth. So it would stand to reason then that with the leaps in technology that have greased the skids on increasingly lifelike portrayals of gruesome death, our youth would be growing more violent statistically.

However, the opposite is true.

Sociologist Karen Sternheimer, specializing in pop culture and youth at the University of Southern California, and author of “It’s Not the Media,” and a recent article for the American Sociological Association, “Do Video Games Kill?,” argues that blaming youth violence–suburban or urban–on video games is a gross over simplification of an incredibly tangled cultural skein.

Further, that based on numerous studies and statistical analysis’s, violent video games don’t turn children into emotionless, trained killers.

“There are a lot of other issues that go on beyond the media explanation,” said Sternheimer. “We’re for some reason more interested in violence when it’s committed by young people. But we didn’t ask what kind of music and video games Tim McVeigh was into. We kind accepted this guy had some other issues going on, to say the least.”

Her big picture stance flies in the face of what has, in the past few years, become pop culture dogma. In certain circles, when the subject of violence in the media and its impact on youth arises, it’s taken at face value that the media is primarily to blame for what appears to be a disturbing trend.

However, the perception that youth are more violent today than they were ten years ago using high profile school shootings as a barometer, is not sound social science.

“High profile shootings allowed people to say see, violence is everywhere,” said Sternheimer. “But something coverage of those shootings missed is that youth violence, in the same year that Columbine happened, was in decline. No one really noticed though, because those shootings are an emotional issue.”

As stated in a report from the Surgeon General’s office, “Youth Violence: A Report by the Surgeon General,” in 2001, starting in the mid-1990s, “overall arrest rates began to decline, returning by 1999 to rates only slightly higher than those in 1983.”

There is no disagreement among experts on both sides of the fence that the types of violence serious enough to garner police attention–with the exception of unreported rapes, which are resistant to statistical analysis–plummeted across the board, including school shootings.

Indeed, even in 1999, the year the Columbine shootings occurred, the trend in decreasing violent crime still experienced an overall statistical downturn.

And those were the prime years that violent video games came to the fore as a dominant form of entertainment.

It is interesting to note that despite the decline, the Surgeon General’s report is of the stance that youth violence is still an endemic problem with much cause for worry, and that the arrest rate numbers are misleading.

Using broad, confidential, face-to-face surveys of youth and asking which acts of violence they had committed in a given time period, the Surgeon General’s report claims that though there was a downturn in arrestable violent crime starting in the mid-1990s, using the survey results, youth violence is still at an all time high.

But the Surgeon General’s combination of two sets of data to reach the report’s conclusion is somewhat disingenuous, and fails to tell the whole story.

First, using the survey results as a statistical sounding board for youth violence lacks the cumulative historical well that makes arrest rates effective. It’s impossible to say what the survey might have turned up in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s. The trend might very well have been exactly the same with no statistical increase, so combining survey results with arrest records to make the claim that youth violence is still at an all time high isn’t necessarily accurate.

Secondly, the confidential surveys don’t gauge the kinds of high profile, high body count violence that the cultural debate swirls around when it comes to video games.

“Self-report studies are good for minor kinds of violence,” said Sternheimer. “But for the major indicators of violence, it’s still arrest rates. School shootings are very rare anyway. Even in a bad year, it’s still a good year. Schools are among least likely place where a minor is likely to get injured or killed. Something like two percent.”

And here the issue arrives at something of an impasse. The numbers don’t lie. Violent crime is down, but violence in video games is up. What role, then, do video games play in shaping the way we interact with the world? With enough focused exposure to violence in video games and other media, will our culture grow more violent despite the present statistical downturn?

Going from the solid foundation of numbers and scientific analysis to the philosophy of entertainment, video game historian Keith Feinstein, founder of Videotopia, the world’s first comprehensive video game museum, having tracked the evolution of games from the first Pong console to the Playstation 3, doesn’t think so.

“There are worse culprits than video games, and animated films are a great example,” said Feinstein. “If it wasn’t made by Pixar, you’re hurting an animal for a laugh, or hurting someone for a laugh. There’s a general crudeness, a general meanness that creeps into culture, and that has nothing to do with video games.”

Elaborating further, Feinstein said that it’s not so much the video game, or the violence itself, that is the issue at play in the culture wars. Moreover, it’s the underlying technology that frightens older generations who can’t comprehend the fast changing mechanics shaping the way the world interacts.

“People who were brought up on the Atari, a lot of them have dropped out of video game scene,” said Feinstein. “They don’t understand the modern language. They become frightened of what they don’t understand.”

And when people are frightened, oversimplifying a complex problem becomes attractive as a quick, easy fix to an otherwise imposing cultural barrier. In order to break the barrier down to its most basic building blocks, a few questions must be asked. Are video games an art form?

Feinstein says yes, unequivocally, they are. The story lines, graphical skill, and interaction of many different elements to make a product that is entertaining, beautiful, and meaningful classifies them as art.

Since video games are an art form, then does art influence culture, or does culture influence art?

The answer to that question, as in all things, can be found in moderation. According to Feinstein and Sternheimer, art forms are primarily a reflection of the world around us. However, art can influence culture.

Many times, it acts as a cultural catalyst, expressing ideas in a way that connects to an unrealized sub-current that ultimately rises to prominence due to the artists giving voice to a generation’s issues and needs.

“It brings a lens to things, and Picasso’s work is great because of what it turned society onto,” said Feinstein. “They were, frankly, a bunch of very elitist, super-educated, unsuccessful people. But they talked and they made a big difference in the world. It started an entire movement. Pieces of art can do that, and they can reflect culture in the same way.”

Video games had the same impact in the 1980s. A small, ground breaking game known as Missile Command was released on the Atari in the Regan era of nuclear proliferation. Armament was a paramount issue at the time, uniting the country across cultural divides. No one knew when, how, or why, but a significant portion of the population thought that on some scale, nuclear war was inevitable.

In Missile Command, nuclear missiles fell out of the sky. It was the job of the missile commander holding the controller to shoot the bombs from the air before they ruined the city. It started slow and picked up the pace with each new level, quickly reaching impossible speed.

“I was frightened to death back then, and Missile Command was a perfect reflection of that. It turned everyone’s attention to the issue,” said Feinstein. “[Missile Command] was featured in a whole bunch of movies and news programs. And the big lesson with the game? No matter what happens, you lose. Even with the highest score, you get the big blast because you can’t keep up.”

And while not all video games ultimately give voice to a generation–PacMan is today merely an iconic reference point–games do have the ability to influence culture and ideas. On that basis, video games say something about our culture; they don’t make culture.

Grand Theft Auto, another popular game generations removed from Missile Command, reflects this sentiment.

“It’s brilliantly designed, and completely morally reprehensible. That’s what it is. So if you’re looking to games to teach your children, you’re making a very big mistake,” said Feinstein. “If you don’t want Grand Theft Auto in your house, don’t have it in your house. Sure, your kids are probably going to go play it somewhere else: But it’s not the medium or the message. It’s how you’re taught to interpret the message.”

The problem is one of context and personal responsibility, more than video games creating killer kids. “Yeah,” said Feinstein, “the Columbine shooters played with pipe bombs in their basement and no one stopped them from playing Doom. But no one stopped them from building pipe bombs in their basement, either.”

Like it or not, soon people will be getting the majority of their entertainment needs from video games. For example, today, more people play NBA basketball games on console systems than attend live NBA basketball games. And that means, more than anything, it’s a matter of choice. What will you consume, and how will you interpret the message?

Today, I find myself a ruthless mob boss after recently beating Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I’ve sniped innocent pedestrians from rooftops and blown up exactly 160 stolen vehicles. Because I never drove a tank through the middle of the city and survived, I’m only at 80% completion for the game, according to handy statistics provided in order to gauge my criminality.

Yet I understand that going out onto the street and punching someone in the face will land me in prison, not to mention the penalties for hijacking an attack helicopter and strafing a police station. The consequences of such actions aren’t savory, and I know that it is not a good way to live my life.

Still, I greatly enjoy the game, and this is because we all have violent tendencies, according to Feinstein. Video games reflect an inherent biological impulse. In our society, violence in any form is often seen as unhealthy; it is a thing to be suppressed, ignored, and ultimately, little talked about on a personal level.

But that sets a dangerous precedent.

“Who’s to say violence is an unhealthy impulse? We wouldn’t be alive and we couldn’t feed ourselves. We wouldn’t have the culture we live in,” said Feinstein. “We all have violent tendencies. If only a few people had violent tendencies, we’d all be enslaved. So I don’t think violence is necessarily an evil thing. We are in a lot of ways animals that are ill adapted to the culture we’ve created for ourselves. So there are impulses that no longer fit into the society we have today, but that doesn’t make them negative.”

And in a society wherein real acts of violence don’t fit into the going paradigm, video games may indeed help channel and redirect those self-same impulses, though there is much debate on that issue, and there is no conclusive scientific proof one way or the other.

Perhaps, when it’s all said and done, eminent rap artist Marshall Mathers, on his eponymous album Marshall Mathers LP, put it best regarding the impact of media on violence, and the personal responsibility that comes with consumption: “When a dude’s gettin bullied and shoots up his school and they blame it on Marilyn and the heroin, where were the parents at? And look where it’s at: Middle America. Now it’s a tragedy.”

The problem is, however, which provider do you choose? XM, known for it’s better musical selection, or Sirius, with its talk-heavy roster?

If the two merge, as was recently proposed, you might not have to. And fewer choices could mean a better product.

Of course, you’d get some repeats. A shining example cited by Forrester Research Vice President, Josh Bernoff, in an interview with PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Leher, is the shock jocks.

"In this case, one company has the NFL on it, and the other one has baseball," said Bernoff. "One has Howard Stern, and the other has Opie and Anthony."

That might not be such a bad thing, though, said Bernoff, because both companies are currently operating at a loss with somewhat soft subscriber bases, and a merger might be a benefit.  It would force the companies to cut extraneous shows and focus on what works.

The deal means potential users would get more bang for their buck. But will the companies even be allowed to merge?

When they started up a few years ago, one of the stipulations agreed upon with the FCC was that the companies would remain two separate and distinct entities. Anti-trust issues are something of a hot button with the American public, and the satellite players wouldn’t have any direct satellite competitors if this occured.

Bernoff said it’s important to keep in mind that just because there’s no direct competition, it doesn’t mean that there’s no competition period.

"The most liberal way to look at it is that everything competes with everything else," said Bernoff. "And for that reason, merging these two similar companies means they’ll still have to compete with iPods, and Internet radio, and high-definition terrestrial radio and so on."

And while things like podcasts and new media outlets such as YouTube are giving traditional formats like radio and cable a run for their money, it’s highly debatable if the merger will even make a difference.

Why? Because the bottom line with any company in the free market is that until it starts turning a profit, the business model is essentially unproven. And neither XM or Sirius are profitable.

This is obvious in companies such as Amazon and Netflix, which even today-despite impressive subscriber and user growth-see hesitation from mainstream investors and businessmen.

Though Bernoff quoted a study in which 13% of consumers polled said they would be open to trying a satellite radio format, theoretically proving that a market exists, capturing that market is another story.

The problem lies in converting an every day consumer who might appreciate the novelty of the concept, to using a pay-per-month subscription service. The advertising cost in winning customers this way is, in short, crippling on top of the medium’s other expenses-paying mind boggling sums to high-profile media celebrities like Howard Stern and Oprah that attract users.

Additionally, the American public has grown up taking free media for granted; it’s able to reach down, twiddle the dial, and pull up a wide selection of music at little or no cost. With the advent of increasingly powerful cellphones that offer streaming music options, as well as a growing selection of well-done internet radio, what’s the draw to pay $12 a month for a service that still seems to be at the far end of the luxury spectrum?

The consensus among media analysts thus far seems to be that a merger is a good idea. What looked, until only a few months ago, like two nascent media giants riding a sinking ship, may have something of a fighting chance.

Many questions still remain, and as yet, the media world seems to be holding its breath, waiting to exhale until the FCC metes out a ruling.

If it goes through, satellite radio just might be in your future next time you’re cruising through the boondocks. And don’t worry-if you miss it, you’ll always be able to catch the entire ourvre of Lawrence Welk on AM.

Then you can download the list, a multimedia mini-application, onto your iPod, and walk through the store with directions while listening to your favorite hair metal band.

To put it succinctly, Mogopop is a new multimedia sharing website–music, video, print–created to work solely with the iPod. And while I’m not usually a big fan of software/web concepts based on proprietary chunks of hardware like the iPod, Mogopop might just make me a believer.

When you go to the Mogopop site you have one of two choices: Create Content or Download Content. It’s a friendly opening page. Stripped down, poppy, pleasing color scheme.

Everything the Web 2.0 crowd is looking for right off the bat. Click on the Create Content it takes you right to a sign up page, but the Download button takes you to the site’s offering.

Your best bet is to browse around a bit first. Go to Download, and it takes you to the main spread. Here again the page doesn’t disappoint. The layout is easy to figure out and right away you see what the place is all about: user generated content.

If you’re a fan of In-N-Out burger, there’s a guide to all locations with street addresses. Then it gives you the down low on all the secret orders you can make at the counter. I’m loving this.

I downloaded the In-N-Out guide and tried it out. The iPod interface that Mogopop designed to transfer the mini-apps from site to iPod is just as user-friendly as the rest, and the mini-media package on the iPod took up a negligible amount of space.

I’m thinking: cool, this is free? Yup.

Now, how great is Mogopop after the glow wears off? Well here’s where it falls short.

I tried the site out a couple times and sure, I like it, but Mogopop is trying to build an entire community around one piece of hardware. As a user, I’m looking at the work I’m going to have to put in towards building my mini-applications (which is an easy process)–guides, playlists, and the rest–but I know this isn’t going to be a body of work that lasts.

Let’s say I really pour myself into Mogopop. I’m the Mogo-King. What happens in five years when everyone’s moved on to a new piece of hardware? What about all the effort I’ve put into creating cool, envelope pushing mini-apps for the community?

Right now, it looks like I just move on to whatever’s next. If Mogopop really wants to catch on, it’s going to have to make this offering available across different platforms. Not only that, but offer all the latest user-generated, web-based features on top of the iPod ‘bait’.

The key here, and I’ll be watching, is to see if Mogopop can successfully implement other Web 2.0 concepts like user-rated news, extensive interactive comments, and the ability to form groups and sub-communities based on specific interests and location.

In the near future, that’ll be the test of time separating the men from the boys in popular online sites. Because we want something that lets you not only actively contribute to and ‘build’, but network and communicate easily.

If Mogopop doesn’t instantly give the impression that it’s a site that will morph just as our fast changing generation’s tastes do, I don’t see it being any more than a cool, novelty, “Oh, hey, that’s kind of interesting,” website.

Time will be the ultimate test of Mogopop. For now, it definitely wouldn’t hurt to check out.

Researchers like Marcus, who keep a finger on the pulse of the malware underground, formulate yearly virus trend predictions, with the intent of helping users stay on the up and up. One of the biggest trends Marcus has pinpointed for 2007 is an increase in “zero day” attacks.

A zero day attack, as it’s known in the computer security industry, is an assault on an application possessing a previously unknown vulnerability, which is in turn revealed to the general population before being taken to the application’s vendor.

A good way to think of a zero day day attack is to picture a row of pristine houses with neat little gadgets such as electric garage door openers. If the houses are computers and the garage door openers are the applications, you’re a guy walking down the street with a universal remote who just found out that if you push the power button, some defect in all the garage door openers lets you open every garage on the street due to an unforeseen glitch.

In the computer world, the different terms, ‘vulnerability,’ ‘exploit,’ and ‘virus,’ can get confusing. The difference between each is fairly simple.

Think of a vulnerability as a back door into an application. For example, if there’s an extremely popular music playing program that’s used by a large number of people, but it has a chunk of code that is poorly constructed, it might provide a loophole for the criminally minded. This is a vulnerability.

If the vulnerability is found and brought to the attention of the vendor who created the application, and it is subsequently fixed, the problem never progresses beyond this stage.

However, the internet is no utopia and the business world doesn’t always turn on a dime.

If the vulnerability is never brought to the attention of the application builders, or the builders fail to provide an update fast enough, a malicious programmer can string together a code sequence that allows him to take advantage the loophole. That code sequence, harmless on its own, is known as an exploit.

The final step, the actual virus, is a tightly wrapped program—not much different than a calculator or game program—that delivers the exploit code payload to your computer by attaching itself to the vulnerable application, which allows the coder behind the virus to take advantage of your system in various ways.

Problems for computer security experts can be compounded when malicious programmers start sharing exploit code strings and collaborate on building the actual virus program, a trend that has seen explosive growth in the last few years.

“On the bad guys side of the house, they do certain things very efficiently,” said Marcus. “They communicate very effectively. They used to write things for bragging rights, now they’re more apt to collaborate.”

In the new year, he expects to see this kind of collaboration grow, which poses difficulties for computer security experts due to the power of numbers. The more people working to perfect a program—malicious or friendly—the stronger the program gets.

A recent vulnerability exposed in the Apple’s QuickTime program illustrates exactly how this concept—from vulnerability to exploit to virus—works. The end product, the new QuickTime virus, represents a hybrid virus style that could take off in 2007.

“The advantage the malware writer has is they can always look for the new vector and always test against antivirus programs,” said Marcus. “The Symantecs and the McAfees can’t do that.”

In a nutshell, the QuickTime virus is unique because it works on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Generally a virus attacks one or the other due to fundamental differences between Windows and Macintosh operating systems, with an overwhelming majority targeted at Windows due to its reputation for leaky code, easy exploitability, and overwhelming market dominance.

Though Apple has an industry reputation for being a low-virus system, the QuickTime virus can take advantage of a Macintosh as easily as it does Windows. That dual capability set off alarm bells in December 2006 and on into 2007, said Marcus.

With the new Intel chips in Apple computers, allowing Macintosh operating systems to run Windows applications at native speeds, this kind of dual operability virus could see cross platform growth as well in the new year.

As 2007 marches on there’s no hard and fast rule for avoiding viruses, said Marcus. The biggest problem will continue to be the zero day vulnerabilities, and a mushrooming cloud of spam is expected to reach epidemic proportions in 2007 according to a wide range of experts, which may very well pose additional difficulties to all who love, or loathe, the Internet.

After Allysa Myers landed a part-time job as a secretary for McAfee’s Avert Labs division, she did just that.

“I had a pretty good explanation for how it all worked out,” said Myers. “As a florist I was helping people, making people smile. Going from that to computer viruses, I was making their day easier.”

The way Myers explains it–she’s now a Reverse Research Engineer–she sort of fell into the job. Floristry was seasonal work that fluctuated and didn’t provide enough income in the off months. Tapping a McAfee contact she made as a florist, Myers came on as a part-time secretary.

From there things slowly clicked into place. Though she’d been around computers her entire life, Myers never had a chance to get serious, in-depth knowledge.

“Bit by bit I was able to learn from the guys who’d been doing it for years and years,” said Myers. “It’s similar to the way I learned flowers.”

The switch couldn’t have happened at a better crossroads. Right around the time Myers began getting interested in the computer world, the dot-com boom of the late 1990s was in full swing. Computer companies of all stripes were thirsty for computer savvy individuals who showed interest in taking on more responsibility.

“Basically there was enormous need for people and very few people had training at the time,” said Myers.

Her first step up came when helping a colleague who was working on a book about viruses. His native language wasn’t English, so she helped with the editing process. Afterwards, researchers began funneling small jobs her way.

Within a year, the McAfee made her an analyst, and she began taking on larger and more complex problems.

A real test came quickly, as the Melissa Virus hit the Internet like a house frau in Wal-Mart shortly after her promotion.

“I caught the bleeding edge of that one and started hearing rumors of a document that was circulating and hadn’t seen a sample yet,” says Myers. “That was exciting.”

As Myers gained expertise, she naturally found a niche and today is one of the leading computer security experts on information crime. Due to the nature of her work, she regularly interfaces with global and national law enforcement agencies and states. The black market for information crime is, “absolutely huge,” according to Myers.

Today’s thriving black market is one of the biggest changes Myers has seen seen over the years. These days the criminal element in the electronic world has a much stronger focus on the almighty dollar, using highly sophisticated schemes such as IRC-linked adware and malware bots that can run crippling Denial of Service attacks and credit card theft schemes.

A Denial of Service attack uses the combined power of a large number of individual personal computers to flood a target computer/server with so much traffic that the target effectively halts dead in its tracks, unable to process all of the incoming data.

The owners of the personal computers used in DoS attacks are generally unaware that their machine is compromised. A hacker will install a backdoor program, then funnel in a piece of malicious software (malware) that turns the computer into a machine slaved into a much larger network. The hacker can then direct all the computers under his control to flood the target with traffic over and over again. Though one PC isn’t enough to slow down a major corporation’s website, 10,000 just might.

Popular web portals such as Yahoo and Google are under constant threat from these types of attacks due to their high profile.

Five to ten years ago, computer crimes such as DoS attacks were done for reasons centering more on status and notoriety, said Myers. The days of the fifteen year old teenage hacker counting coup on a corporate website from his parent’s basement are long gone, however.

In its place is a staggeringly complex operation that’s expanded well outside the bounds of the computer screen. “They’re hiring people to be mules in real life who receive packages they’ve purchased online with those stolen credit cards,” said Myers. “These are truly international crime rings.”

In the next ten years Myers said she forsees the Internet going in one of two directions. In the first scenario the electronic communication infrastructure grows more interconnected and vital to business and life as more and more of the worldwide population gets connected. A general security sense and basic education will teach people how to protect their systems from increasingly devious attacks and acts of computer crime, and the system will prosper.

“Seems like the interconnectedness is what’s making it a lot more interesting and a lot more dangerous at the same time,” said Myers. “For example, email used to be fairly simple thing. Spam was not much an issue. You could be sure it was from who email said it was from.”

However, the Internet has changed. If people don’t grow more security conscious, the second scenario could play out. In another reality, crime could reduce the Internet to an unusable slagheap, the difficulties in communication due to individuals who don’t understand basic security and fall prey to rampant profit schemes turning the Internet into the modern day equivalent of an impassable jungle.

As to which way it’ll go, only time will tell said Myers. “I’m hoping the way it goes is that they begin to understand these basic security issues,” she said. “You lock your doors at night and everything stays safe and usable. That sort of thing.”

While the new web-based CD label building application MediaFACE Online is nifty, I’m not sure it’s worth the price tag at $19.95.

Though it represents a definite step in the right direction for the much-anticipated Web 2.0 movement, the Neato, Inc., software title suffers in a number of respects, which will keep users away on both sides of the beginner-expert graphics design coin.

The program is certainly not without its positive features. There’s an easy sign on process. As soon as you go to the MediaFACE website you’re greeted with a number of self-explanatory options. Do you want to build a CD label? An iPod wrap or skin? A DVD insert or sleeve? Cool. Choose your poison. Smooth sailing up to here.

Next you get to pick and choose from a wide variety of formats matching different label configurations produced by Neato, Inc, which is a subsidiary of Fellowes, the office supply company. You can make 30 CD labels at once, or design just one, it’s up to you. No problem.

This is where it gets tricky.

The software takes you directly to the web-based application after going through the initial setup phases. Anyone with a newish operating system, decent chunk of RAM, and a recent browser release should be able to run this puppy.

Here’s where I think users will get lost, and this is a doozy. MediaFACE has too many fairly advanced graphics designers’ tools for an online application.

Neato was going for the best of both worlds: an online application with the options and power of Photoshop and all the usability of a beginner WYSIWYG website builder that makes you look like a pro. On the left side of the screen there is a standard palette of design tools. You can crop, insert shapes, pictures and text. Though the tools are standard for graphics designers, they still aren’t any easier for the beginner trying to figure out advanced touches like utilizing different layers, integrating pictures seamlessly, warping, shading, fading and all the other esoteric tricks used in a good design.

Therefore, unless you want your labels coming out looking like amateur hour, you’re going to have to invest a significant chunk of time learning to use these tools if you don’t have any design experience. There aren’t too many busy beginner users who are going to want to pay for and spend time learning this program.

Not as long as there are black Sharpie pens.

If you’re already an experienced graphics designer, you probably already have software like Adobe Photoshop that fits you like an old shoe. I highly doubt you’ll abandon your application of choice for the relatively underpowered (by comparison) online MediaFACE application

For causal users this product just doesn’t have the kind of simple click it and go interface that it needs in order to attract beginner level users from the bottom of the ladder and expert level users from the top looking for good quick fix.

All in all, a nice effort, but Neato needs to consider who’s going to be using their program.