Sony to limit sharing of Playstation Network games on multiple PS3s and PSPs (Digital Trends)

If you have multiple Playstation 3 consoles or PSPs tied to your Playstation Network account, you may have to make some decisions soon regarding which systems to favor.

Over at the UK Playstation Blog, Sony has announced plans to limit the number of systems a downloaded game can be played on. The restriction takes effect November 18, and though it?s a UK-only rule at this point, the policy is likely to make its way to the North American market, too.

According to the new limit, any game downloaded via the Playstation Network after November 18 can be ?activated? on a maximum of two Playstation 3 consoles or two PSP systems. (This includes the PSPgo.)

Gamers who need to decide which system to favor will be able to manage their activated games through each device, and Sony will also create a new online tool for deciding which systems are associated with your Playstation Network account.

There???s also a guide to activating and deactivating your systems posted on the site that explains the process.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20111104/tc_digitaltrends/sonytolimitsharingofplaystationnetworkgamesonmultipleps3sandpsps

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SPIN METER: GOP flips on job creation for defense (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The same Republicans who insist that federal spending doesn't create jobs and should be cut in the face of staggering deficits are leading the charge against smaller military budgets because about a million defense jobs would be lost.

Pentagon accounts are coming down, and Republicans who repeatedly reject the idea that an infusion of federal dollars can produce new jobs now say the government should keep billions flowing to the makers of guns, tanks, aircraft and ships for the sake of sparing jobs in home districts and states. It's the newest of several arguments against reducing Pentagon budgets.

The contradiction undercuts the GOP's anti-government spending mantra that proved successful for the party in 2010 congressional races in which Republicans reclaimed the House ? a pitch sure to be repeated by candidates in 2012 contests.

Then and now, Republicans fill the campaign airwaves, news releases and stump speeches with the argument that Democratic spending ? and specifically President Barack Obama's $825 billion stimulus package in 2009 ? doesn't create jobs. Just this August, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said they were wrong, estimating that in the second quarter of this year alone, the spending package increased the number of people employed by between 1 million and 2.9 million.

Consider the latest argument from Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee as lawmakers stare down at least $450 billion in cuts from projected defense spending over the next 10 years.

Running for re-election, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., said in February 2010 that the stimulus package did not create new jobs. In a statement about the economy and jobs now on his website, McKeon says "congressional Democrats and the administration continue to insist that we can spend our way out of this recession and create jobs, but the numbers just don't add up."

But at a hearing last week, McKeon, now the committee chairman, argued against cuts to the military, saying, "We don't spend money on defense to create jobs. But defense cuts are certainly a path to job loss, especially among our high-skilled workforces. There is no private sector alternative to compensate for the government's investment."

He later added, "While cuts to the military might reduce federal spending, they harm national security and they definitely don't lead to job growth."

Asked about the competing statements, a spokesman for McKeon, Claude Chafin, said they were "not inconsistent" because the defense industry is a unique recipient of federal dollars.

The Pentagon is facing reductions of nearly half a trillion dollars, stemming in large part from the limits set in the debt accord reached this summer between Obama and congressional Republicans. Republicans and Democrats, as well as the Pentagon, fear that the special bipartisan panel looking to slash the deficit won't be able to come up with a plan in three weeks to cut at least $1.2 trillion in spending over 10 years. If they can't, automatic, across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion kick in, with half coming from defense.

McKeon's remarks came at a hearing in which the GOP-led panel had invited three economists to testify about the potentially dire consequences of defense cuts.

One of the witnesses, Stephen S. Fuller, a professor at George Mason University, had conducted an analysis of defense cuts and the economic impact for the defense industry. He told the Armed Services Committee that an estimated 1 million jobs would be lost if defense spending cuts totaled $1 trillion. Hardest hit would be California, with 125,800 jobs lost, and Virginia, with 122,800. The two states have a significant number of aerospace and defense workers.

That prompted Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., to echo McKeon in warning about potential job losses if the federal spigot of defense dollars is turned down.

"We need to put those costs on the table when we're saying, OK, over here you're going to save all this. We need to let all these states and people know we're not saving it; we're just passing it on to you, because basically you're going to lose a lot of jobs in making this decision," Forbes said at the hearing.

It was Forbes who wrote on Oct. 24: "The government has tried its hand at job creation by pouring money on the problem, picking winners and losers in the industry, and imposing stifling regulations. It has not worked."

Questioned about his comments, Forbes said in an interview that federal spending does create jobs, but his argument ? and that of other Republicans ? is "the federal government never creates jobs as efficiently as the private sector creates jobs."

The Defense Department's budget has nearly doubled to $700 billion in the 10 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Those numbers do not include the trillion-plus dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, money that wasn't paid for with tax increases or offsetting spending cuts.

Robert Pollin, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who has compared job creation from military spending to other sectors, said dollars for defense certainly would create jobs.

"It's no surprise to say, with $700 billion ... you better be creating a lot of jobs," Pollin said.

The issue, however, is how many jobs.

A study that Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier conducted in 2009 found that spending $1 billion on health care, education or clean energy, or cutting taxes, created more jobs across all pay ranges than spending the equivalent amount on the military. Investment in education generated about 29,100 jobs from $1 billion in spending compared with 19,600 jobs from health care, 17,100 from clean energy and 11,600 from the military, according to the analysis.

"Channeling funds into clean energy, health care and education in an effective way will therefore create significantly greater opportunities for decent employment throughout the U.S. economy than spending the same amount of funds with the military," the two wrote.

Pollin said Thursday that an updated study is forthcoming ? and the conclusions are the same.

Said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.: "Defense spending is a poor way to create jobs. You can create more jobs investing in other areas."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111104/ap_on_go_co/us_government_job_creator

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White House rebuffs subpoena on failed solar firm (AP)

Associated Press ? The White House on Friday strongly rebuffed a subpoena from House Republicans seeking all communications about a failed solar panel manufacturer that received a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee.

In a letter to two top Republicans on the House energy panel, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said the request "was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."

The White House and the Energy Department have already turned over 85,000 pages of documents on Solyndra Inc. The California-based company filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers after receiving $528 million in federal backing.

Ruemmler said those documents show no wrongdoing or political favoritism by the administration. She added that curiosity alone is not a justification to encroach on the Executive Branch's longstanding confidentiality interests.

House Republicans have used Solyndra to highlight what they see as President Barack Obama's failure to create clean energy jobs. The company was the first to receive a federal loan guarantee under the 2009 stimulus law, which greatly expanded the program. Obama visited the company last year to praise it publicly.

Documents already obtained by the committee show that the administration knew the firm had problems, yet continued to support it.

On Thursday, a subcommittee of the energy panel voted on party lines to issue the subpoena, calling the White House "obstructionist."

House Energy and Commerce chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement issued Friday that he was disappointed that the White House and House Democrats were continuing to put up "partisan roadblocks to hide the truth from taxpayers," when, he said, the investigation so far has shown that the GOP is on the right track.

"Solyndra was a jobs program gone bad, and we must learn the lesson of Solyndra as we work to turn our economy around and put folks back to work," he said.

___

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111104/ap_on_re_us/us_white_house_solar_investigation

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Senate GOP blocks Obama infrastructure plan (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Republicans in the Senate Thursday dealt President Barack Obama the third in a string of defeats on his stimulus-style jobs agenda, blocking a $60 billion measure for building and repairing infrastructure like roads and rail lines.

Supporters of the failed measure said it would have created tens of thousands of construction jobs and lifted the still-struggling economy. But Republicans unanimously opposed it for its tax surcharge on the wealthy and spending totals they said were too high.

The 51-49 vote fell well short of the 60 votes required under Senate procedures to start work on the bill. Every Republican opposed the president, as did Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and former Democrat Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who still aligns with the party.

Obama's loss was anything but a surprise, but the White House and its Democratic allies continue to press popular ideas from Obama's poll-tested jobs package in what Republicans say is nothing more than a bare-knuckle attempt to gain a political edge by invoking the mantra of jobs but doing little to seek compromise.

"The truth is, Democrats are more interested in building a campaign message than in rebuilding roads and bridges," said Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "And frankly, the American people deserve a lot better than that."

"Their goal is to do everything they can to drag down this economy, to do anything they can to focus attention negatively on the President of the United States in hopes that he can get my job, perhaps, and that President Obama will be defeated," Reid said. "So let's not talk about campaign speeches here on the Senate floor. Let's talk about reality."

After Republicans blocked Obama's infrastructure plan, the president's Democratic allies immediately killed a competing GOP infrastructure plan that would have extended existing highway and transit spending programs and paid for the spending with a $40 billion cut in unspent funding for other domestic programs. The White House opposed the measure over its spending cuts and provisions that would block recent clean air rules and make it harder for the administration to issue new rules.

Obama unveiled his $447 billion jobs plan in September and has launched a campaign-style effort ? featuring multiple rallies in states crucial to his reelection bid ? to try to get it passed. In votes last month, Republicans blocked the entire $447 billion jobs package and a subsequent attempt by Democrats to pass a $35 billion piece of it aimed at preventing layoffs of teachers and firefighters.

Another political flash point is the way Democrats have sought to pay for Obama's jobs measures ? a surcharge on income exceeding $1 million. The idea enjoys wide backing in opinion polls but is stoutly opposed by Republicans, who say it would hit small business owners and therefore threaten job growth.

With the demise of Thursday's measure, an announcement could come as early as Friday on what's the next piece of Obama's jobs agenda to break out for a stand-alone vote. Democratic aides say the next measure would be legislation to provide a $4,800 tax credit for hiring an unemployed veteran and increasing the tax credit for hiring a veteran with a service-related disability to up to $9,600.

Republicans back the idea of the veterans hiring tax credit.

Thursday's legislation would have provided an immediate $50 billion investment in roads, bridges, airports and transit systems. It also called for a $10 billion bank to leverage private and public capital for longer-term infrastructure projects.

The measure would be financed by a 0.7 percent surcharge on income over $1 million.

After Obama's full $447 billion jobs bill was filibustered to death last month, the White House immediately announced it would seek votes on component pieces. That's a way to exert political pressure on Republicans sensitive about their own jobs agenda, which so far has centered on relaxing regulations and boosting offshore oil exploration and drilling.

Obama last week uncorked a "We Can't Wait" initiative that relies on executive authority rather than legislation from a bitterly divided Congress to help homeowners refinance "underwater" homes and give borrowers relief from their student loans.

Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are casting blame on the Senate for failing to act on 15 "forgotten" jobs bills, including a measure to repeal a law requiring federal, state and many local governments to withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors until their taxes are paid.

Also Thursday, the House is poised to approve bipartisan legislation to remove a Securities and Exchange Commission ban that prevents small, privately held companies from using advertisements to solicit investors. The SEC ban, says bill sponsor Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., unfairly limits the ability of small companies to raise capital.

"While the president is out doing campaign events all over the country, what he could do is to actually come to Washington and be focused on trying to help pass bills that would create a better environment for job creation and help put the American people back to work," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111103/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_jobs

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Invisible Ink Reveals Cool Chemistry

invisible inkWhat's your secret message?: With just a few household items--and a little bit of science--you can make an invisible ink message that will reveal itself under just the right conditions. Image: iStockphoto/JoKMedia

Key concepts
Chemistry
Acids
Oxidation
Heat

Introduction
Have you ever wondered how spies and secret agents could leave secret messages? Invisible ink might sound high tech, but you can create?and read!?a top secret message with one simple kitchen ingredient: lemons. George Washington's army used this same concept to send secret messages during the American Revolutionary War. What message will you write?

Background
Lemon juice?and the juice of most fruits, for that matter?contains carbon compounds. These compounds are pretty much colorless at room temperature. But heat can break down these compounds, releasing the carbon. If the carbon comes in contact with the air, a process called oxidation occurs, and the substance turns light or dark brown.

Materials
???? One half of a lemon (use caution when cutting)
???? One half teaspoon of water
???? Small bowl
???? Spoon
???? White paper
???? Q-tips
???? A lamp with a lightbulb that puts off a lot of heat, such as a 100-watt incandescent bulb or another heat source, such as a radiator
???? Optional: Pencil (to write a decoy message on your paper)

Preparation
???? Squeeze the juice of your lemon half into the bowl.
???? Add the water and mix with a spoon.
???? Think of a secret message you would like to write?and to whom you're going to deliver it!
???? Extra: If you want to be super secret, you can write a boring old message or draw a picture on the paper with a pencil before you write your secret message to disguise it even further.

Procedure
???? Soak the Q-tip in the lemon juice-and-water solution.
???? Use the damp Q-tip to write your top-secret message on the piece of paper.
???? Wait a few minutes for the paper to dry. While you're waiting, you can switch on your lamp to give the lightbulb time to heat up (being careful not to touch the hot bulb itself).
???? When the paper is dry, hold it up to the hot lamp for a few minutes (but don't let the paper get so hot that it burns). What happened to your invisible ink? How long did it take for the change to occur?
???? Extra: Try this activity with other acidic liquids, such as apple juice or vinegar. Which ones work best?


Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=c43f87dc46c048d163a3061ebe56d2d7

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Hell on Wheels   

The building of the First Transcontinental Railroad is a great subject for a cable drama; however, on the evidence of the first five episodes of Hell on Wheels (AMC, Sundays at 10 p.m. ET), it is not precisely a good one. The series' primary setting is the middle of this continent in the middle of the 1860s, not long after the Surrender at Appomattox Court House. But with an early title blaring that ?the nation is an open wound,? the setting is, first and last, a sovereign republic of metaphor. Not content to exploit their subject?s inherent themes, the series' fraternal creators, Joe and Tony Gayton, have adhered them promiscuously, pasting neon Post-it indications of symbolic import in a way that obscures moments of straightforward drama.
?
Out on the prairie, a fair lady observes that the land ?hasn?t changed since Lewis and Clark first saw it 60 years ago??and then promptly witnesses a raid by natives. Elsewhere, characters divest themselves of con-artistic monologues about Manifest Destiny, rumbling speeches about Reconstruction, paeans to the vast possibilities of America, lilting tributes to the frontier, and homilies on the Promised Land delivered beneath looming crosses. Less frequently, they express recognizable human emotion.?
?
The hero is Cullen Bohannon, played by Anson Mount with a grizzled animality and gaunt humanity that help the character to shoulder the burden of history. Bohannon fought for Confederacy. He was a slave owner, but he freed his slaves before the Civil War began, guided by the influence of his wife: ?She convinced me of the evils of slavery.? She also did needlepoint, as we see in a dewy-eyed flashback to the days before Union soldiers raped and killed her. Bohannon has been serving revenge to the perpetrators on the toasty side, and his quest soon leads him to the frontier of the industrial age?to the mobile tent city that followed the railroad's westward progress from Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The path was long and winding, as dictated by Thomas Durant, who was the vice-president of Union Pacific Railroad and who owned a swath of Nebraska across which the railway uselessly switched back and forth, much to his personal enrichment. Played by Colm Meaney, Durant is a pioneer of corruption, an avid propagandist, a beastly exterminator of brutes, and a fat little florid orator who hogs all the ripest lines. "What is the building of this grand railroad if not a drama?" he asks at one point. He's practicing a sales pitch, maybe, and presenting a mission statement for sure.

The players in this drama are figures in a panoramic diorama. In its world of mud and sepia, feral whores face down lank preachers, Irish immigrant brothers seek their fortunes, Scandinavian-born enforcers looms as creepily as The Seventh Seal's Grim Reaper, and noble savages keep on keeping on. Second billing goes to Common, who plays Elam Ferguson, a former slave working for Union Pacific. The actor does a lot of good simmering and dutiful glowering, and his character's relationship with Bohannon is the richest one on screen. The performance is just good enough to distract you from the fact that Ferguson less resembles an individual than an archetype addressing a few centuries' worth of racial grievances.

None of Hell on Wheels' juicy eruptions of pulp or sporadic glimpses of soul impedes the myth-belching progress of a story about the little engine of empire that could. The shots are heavily styled in a way that is variously enrapturing and distancing, taking cues from landscape paintings, Mathew Brady photographs, and revisionist Westerns?all to the end of toying with the old myths of the New World. But you can hardly see the world for the myths, and the show seems bent on encouraging a sophisticated audience to set its intelligence aside in a sophisticated way.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=136a2692c751bded7a3366051fb74f6b

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Is that a robot in your suitcase?

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A flying robot as small as a dinner plate that can zoom to hard-to-reach places and a fleet of eco-friendly robotic farm-hands are just two of the exciting projects the robotics team at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), based in Brisbane, Australia, is working on.

The pint-sized propellor-powered robots can be packed away into a suitcase. They have multiple cameras which enable them to 'see' the world around them as they navigate their way through buildings, carrying out tasks like deliveries or inspections.

"You'll be able to put your suitcase on the ground, open it up and send the flying robot off to do its job," said Professor Peter Corke, from the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering.

"These robots could fly around and deliver objects to people inside buildings and inspect things that are too high or difficult for a human to reach easily.

"Instead of having to lower someone down on a rope to a window on the seventh floor, or raise them up on a cherrypicker, you could send up the flying robot instead."

The QUT researchers are using cost-effective technology so the robots are affordable. Within the next year, it may be possible to attach arms to the device so it can also fix things.

Professor Corke said his team were busy working out the technical challenges.

"We need to keep it safe when it's up near solid things like power poles, or the edge of a building. It also needs to be able to keep its position when the wind is blowing," he said.

Professor Corke and his team, including fellow researcher Dr Ben Upcroft, are also researching ways to create lightweight agricultural robots, equipped with cameras, that have advanced navigation capability, cooperate in teams to cover large areas and resupply themselves - all while causing less soil damage and applying herbicide more intelligently.

"Farmers are currently using machines which indiscriminately spray herbicide across the crop, which is expensive and not very environmentally friendly," Dr Upcroft said.

"The (robot's) camera can look at the area surrounding the robot and the image recognition software will pick out features of the weed which make it different to the rest of the crop."

The three-year project, which was recently awarded nearly $400,000 in funding from the Australian Research Council, is being conducted with the University of Sydney and Queensland farmer Andrew Bate, who runs Advanced Agricultural Systems.

Andrew Bate, who has a grain and cattle farm at Bendee, south-west of Emerald in central Queensland, said the automation of agriculture was a new frontier.

"We've already reached peak farmland, so we have to figure out smarter farming systems which increase yield in a more cost-effective and environmentally sustainable way," Mr Bate said.

"Every other industry is already enjoying the benefits of robotics. This is the revolution farming has to have."

###

Queensland University of Technology: http://www.qut.edu.au

Thanks to Queensland University of Technology for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114860/Is_that_a_robot_in_your_suitcase_

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Czech Carrier Dumps iPhone Over Apple's 'Business Terms' - Mac ...

Bloomberg briefly reports that Czech carrier Telefonica/O2 has apparently announced that it will cease selling all iPhone models, objecting to Apple's "business terms".

Telefonica Czech Republic AS won?t sell Apple?s new iPhone 4S and will end sales of all Apple?s models because of Apple?s business terms, Hospodarske Noviny reported, citing Telefonica?s local spokesman Hany Farghali.

No additional details on the reasons behind the fall-out have been made available in the Bloomberg report, and the original report from the Czech newspaper does not yet appear to be available online.

Dow Jones Newswires reported last week that Telefonica Czech Republic AS and Apple were still trying to reach a deal for the iPhone 4S, talks that have apparently ended without an agreement being reached.

"We haven't agreed with Apple on mutually acceptable conditions yet," Hany Farghali told Dow Jones Newswires in a telephone interview.

...

Telefonica Czech, majority owned by Spain's Telefonica SA (TEF), is unlikely to add the iPhone 4S model to its pre-holiday offering, said a person familiar with the local mobile market who asked to remain anonymous.

Instead, the company will focus on already much higher volume sales of smart phones based on rival operating systems, including Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android and Nokia Corp.'s (NOK) Symbian.

Telefonica is not the only iPhone carrier in the Czech Republic, as both Vodafone and T-Mobile are also offering the device through their Czech units. Consequently, customers looking to obtain the iPhone in the country will still have options, but Telefonica's departure is an interesting one given the efforts other carriers around the world are making to win the right to offer the device.

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/02/czech-carrier-dumps-iphone-over-apples-business-terms/

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