Consumer protection czar Bjoern Erik Thon, or ombudsman, as its called in Norway, has demanded that Apple make its iTunes media download suite compatible with non-iPod mp3 players or face legal action. According to Thon the Norwegian government will impose fines on Apple if these requests are not met by October 1st of this year. Added Thon:

iTunes is imposing unreasonable and unbalanced restrictions that are not in accordance with Norwegian law.

Similarly, Netherlands consumer protection group Consumentenbond has requested that Dutch antitrust watchdog NMa investigate what were referred to as illegal practices in a formal complaint filing. The Netherlands has given Apple an identical timeline in which to comply.

What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod, said Consumentenbondvan spokesman Ewald van Kouwen. When you buy a music CD it doesn’t play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn’t be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives.

Norway was the first European country to take action against Apple’s iTunes dominance when it filed a formal complaint last June. Since then consumer agencies in Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany and Finland have made similar complaints, and have joined together to find resolution for the matter.

French consumer agency UFC-Que Choisir has been the most active in the fight against the iTunes monopoly. The lobbyist organization championed a law that forced Apple to license its software and hardware to French businesses, which was put into place last August.

And while each country has chosen to deal with the matter in its own way, the general attitudes toward Apple’s policies are largely the same. From a joint statement issued by governments from the aforementioned countries:

We believe consumers have a right to play material purchased online on a portable device of their own choice. Contract clauses that make this impossible or too inconvenient are unfair and should be revoked.

Read the Associated Press
Also read Reuters

Scientists at the University of Rochester have stored an entire image-worth of data within a single photon, promising unsurpassed quantities of data storage for the era of quantum computing that lies before us.

Led by Associate Professor of Physics John Howell the team projected light through a stencil into a 4-inch cube of cesium gas. Upon entering the cube, the image was slowed and compressed, allowing over 100 compressed and slowed images to be stored within the same cell.

It sort of sounds impossible, but instead of storing just ones and zeros, we’re storing an entire image, said Howell. It’s analogous to the difference between snapping a picture with a single pixel and doing it with a camera—this is like a 6-megapixel camera.

Optical buffering, the process of storing data within photons, has been a hot topic within the computer industry because of the speed boosts it promises in regard to both processing and networking. While other researchers have successfully store data in photons, matters of signal distortion and refraction have made it impossible to retrieve data in the same state at which it was stored. Howell’s new method, however, preserves all of the original properties of photon pulses, and allows that data to be manipulated within the 100 nanosecond time frame in which the proton is kept in stasis.

The parallel amount of information John has sent all at once in an image is enormous in comparison to what anyone else has done before, said Alan Willner, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and president of the IEEE Lasers and Optical Society. To do that and be able to maintain the integrity of the signal—it’s a wonderful achievement.

While Howell’s research has certainly set a precedent in optical buffering, the storage of the UR seen above is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Howell’s team is now working toward the goal of delaying pulses for several milliseconds, which would allow even broader uses of buffered data.

Perhaps more ambitious is their intent to store as many as 10,000 pulses of information, essentially an entire archive of such photos as seen above, within a proton for a single nanosecond. Added Howell:

Now I want to see if we can delay something almost permanently, even at the single photon level. If we can do that, we’re looking at storing incredible amounts of information in just a few photons.

Press release courtesy of the University of Rochester

According to Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of GrassrootsFreedom.com, section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before Congress would make it illegal to communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters without registering and reporting to the Senate on a quarterly basis. Due to the vague usage of the term communicate in the proposed bill, these restrictions would impose the same legal and financial obligations as are currently required of large-scale lobbying organizations on any individual attempting to convey political ideas to a group of 500 or more through any medium. Bloggers, vloggers, and any other communicators who fall under these guidelines would face fines, or jail time of up to one year for knowingly and willingly fail[ing] to file or report [prior to commenting on public policy].

Senator David Vitter (R-LA), who introduced the lobbying reform bill to congress, seems to have recoiled in the face of opposition to his initial offering. Shortly after proposing the aforementioned restrictions to congress, Vitter became a co-sponsor of Amendment 20, which would effectively remove Vitter’s contributions to Section 220. Amendment 20, introduced Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT), will be voted upon within the week.

The proposed bill frighteningly mirrors efforts by the Chinese government to require bloggers to use their official names when communicating with an online audience. According to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, the aim of the proposition is to exert greater control over bloggers who publish Irresponsible and untrue information.

The Internet Society of China (ISC), which will be responsible for developing the proposed system, says that no proposals have yet been finalized.

Via PR Newswire
Another TechFreep article

Teamed up with multimedia think tank Immersyve Inc., lab coats at the University of Rochester conducted a study of 1,000 video gamers to gauge what kept them glued to the screen.

Participants in the study were separated into four groups, each of which played a different video game. Gamers were given a survey before and after gameplay to determine what aspects of video games were appealing prior to actually playing a game, and what sort of satisfaction was achieved during and after play.

Rochester researchers determined that while the notion of fun was largely thought to the be the primary motivation for video gaming, the psychological enrichment derived from the challenge of gaming was found to be the greatest consideration for video gamers when deciding to play or re-play a game.

It’s our contention that the psychological pull of games is largely due to their capacity to engender feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness, said Richard Ryan, a motivational psychologist at the University of Rochester.

These factors, in addition to a sense of personal achievement, were found by researchers to enhance overall psychological wellness within gamers.

University researchers conducted a related study in 2003, in which video games were evaluated for their abilities to enhance visual skills in players. Conducted by Daphne Bavelier, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, the study showed that individuals who play action-style video games can actually process visual information at a rate 30 percent faster than non-gamers.

Researchers recruited a group of gaming aficionados who played Medal of Honor, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Half-Life on a regular basis, as well as a non-gaming control group. In a first test an image would appear on a video screen for 1/160th of a second, and subjects were asked to indicate where on screen they had seen the image. The gaming group demonstrated a much higher degree of accuracy in locating the image than non-gamers.

In another test participants were shown a video screen in which 12 objects appeared for a fraction of a second. The subjects were then asked to assess how many objects they had seen. Researchers again found that members of the gaming group were much more likely to respond correctly than non-gamers.

According to Bavelier, whom published the findings of the study in the May 29th, 2003 issue of Nature, These results indicate an enhanced allocation of spatial attention over the visual field, even at untrained locations, in [video game players].

Read the University of Rochester press release
Findings from the second study, as published in National Geographic.
Image courtesy of University of Rochester

A new x-ray scanner at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport takes skin-deep photos of passengers to detect guns and explosives, but should personal privacy be the price of safety?

Dubbed backscatter, such x-ray scanning systems are capable of photographing the bodies of individuals through clothing, producing a composite image of the contours of each passenger’s body. The technology, which has been successfully tested at London’s Heathrow Airport and a number of prisons, hasn’t been implemented in U.S. airports due to privacy concerns.

Backscatter now faces its introduction to the United States following a revision to the system by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that blurs out private areas while still allowing for the detection of any dangerous materials that passengers may be carrying. The exact date of backscatter’s debut has yet to be set upon, but the TSA has said that it will be featured in Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor, which handles about 80 percent of all passengers there.

We’re hoping to have it up for the increased traffic we are anticipating over the holiday and the bowl games, said Paul Armes, regional federal security director for the TSA.

Not all passengers will be required to pass through the backscatter, however. The device will initially be used as a secondary means of scanning for passengers that fail an initial pass through the standard metal detectors.

And while the TSA is gung-ho on security that the backscatter promises, many are hesitant to accept the violation of privacy that the backscatter poses. Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, fears that intimate images taken by the backscatter could easily be abused by airport employees and security agents:

It’s absolutely predictable that as this technology becomes commonplace, you’re going to start seeing those images all over the Internet.

Despite public skepticism TSA officials contend that revisions to the backscatter will fully protect the privacy of passengers. One precaution being taken to ensure passenger privacy is a remote screening process, meaning that only off-site officials in private rooms will be able to view the images. The TSA has also said that images taken by the backscatter will not be stored in the system, but rather deleted immediately after a photo is taken to eliminate abuse.

We did have concerns about the privacy issue before this current technology was available, said Deborah Ostreicher, Deputy Aviation Director for the TSA. But we are assured that passengers will be protected.

Assuming that all goes well with the initial run of the backscatter at Sky Harbor, similar technologies will be introduced to a number of other major U.S. airports early in 2007.

Via azcentral.com

Researchers at the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, China have developed a device that uses sound waves to levitate objects and small animals. Needless to say there has been substantial unrest in the Chinese cockroach community.

Wenjun Xie and his team of colleagues used ultrasonic fields in their testing to keep a myriad of small animals in levitational stasis. Scientists were able to successfully levitate beetles, ants, spiders, ladybugs, tadpoles and fish between the sound wave emitter and reflector that comprise the device. While the ants, ladybugs and other insects were successfully levitated for over 30 minutes apiece without harm, the fish used in the experiment perished despite the scientists’ attempts to add water to the field with a syringe.

While the team has tested the levitation equipment on small quantities of mercury and iridium, the heaviest known liquid and solid respectively, this is the first time it has been used to levitate living creatures. The initial aim of the project was to devise a way to levitate hazardous materials that could corrode containers or for whatever reason aren’t conducive to storage. And while the successful levitation of hazardous materials could prove useful for the production of pharmaceuticals and other industries that involve volatile substances, Xie says that the levitation of animals could open up a whole new realm of possibilities for such technology:

Our results may provide some methods or ideas for biology research. We have tried to hatch eggs of fish [during] acoustic levitation.

Results for the study were published in the online periodical Applied Physics Letters on November 20th.

Via LiveScience.com

Following myriad delays and shortages for the Playstation 3, Sony Computer Entertainment President and CEO Ken Kutaragi has effectively been relegated to a less hands-on role.

The powers that be at Sony have elected to relegate Kutaragi, who has overseen production of the Playstation 3 over the past few years, to a less active Chairman position in Sony’s Computer Entertainment (SCE) Division. Kaz Hirai, chairman of Sony’s Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) division, will assume Kutaragi’s duties as President of SCE in Tokyo. Hirai will be replaced by SCEA Co-Chief Operating Officer Jack Tretton, whom will in turn be replaced by chain of Sony employees until the kid they hired last week in the mail room at SCEA will be promoted to assistant to the manager of large-to-medium-sized parcels.

While Sony hasn’t described Kutaragi’s new position as a demotion per se, the company certainly isn’t moving him off of the Playstation 3 project because they’re thrilled with his performance. In addition to holding the title for the highest cost amongst next-generation consoles, Sony produced only one-tenth the amount of consoles Nintendo for their respective releases. Nintendo made four million Wii consoles available to consumers worldwide for the release in mid-November, while Sony pushed only 400,000 Playstation 3 consoles off the assembly line.

Kutaragi will focus on overseeing the entire operation rather than day-to-day business, said Nanako Kato, a spokeswoman for SCE. His position at the top of the management doesn’t change.

Though Ken Kutaragi may have faltered with the Playstation 3 a bit, getting caught up in the processor and GPU wars with Microsoft, he still hasn’t been put out to pasture. Kutaragi has been with Sony from the Playstation get-go, having lead the team that developed the original Playstation console, ultimately netting Sony the largest piece of a $20 billion industry. While Sony may be looking for younger, fresher talent in Hirai to restore the snap, crackle and pop to the Playstation brand, Kutaragi will still lurk in the background, assessing the bigger picture for SCE. Granted, he’s no longer pushing all of the buttons on the SCE division (no pun intended), but with all the effort he’s put into developing the Playstation lineage over the past decade there’s no shame in stepping to the side.

Via Joystiq
Check out Bloomberg
Another bit from Engadget
The Press Release from Sony

While GM may have come late to the hybrid party, they’re storming onto the scene with the announcement of dual-mode and plug-in hybrid vehicles for 2008 and 2009.

General Motors’ Saturn Vue Green Line Hybrid SUV was unveiled at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show today, fully equipped with some innovations that could make GM a serious hybrid contender in the near future. The Vue Green Line, which will debut in 2008, will pack a punch with a standard 3.6 liter V6 while also improving fuel efficiency as much as 45 percent with a unique dual-mode hybrid system. The dual-mode hybrids will include direct injection and variable valve timing, a nickel-metal hydride battery pack and two active cooled permanent magnet motors. Said Tom Stevens, GM’s group president of its powertrains division:

This will be the auto industry’s first front-wheel-drive vehicle to use a 2-mode hybrid system, which improves fuel economy while maintaining performance and capability.

The dual modes in question allow for adjustment between highway and city driving. While its unclear as to whether the dual-mode hybrid system will be user-controlled or automatic, the hybrid system will actually operate differently depending on the type of driving being done. GM’s dual-mode hybrid improves upon previous single-mode systems from Toyota and Ford that don’t adjust due to usage.

GM has also begun production on a plug-in hybrid version of the Saturn Vue Green Line Hybrid, although the exact production dates are hazy on this one. Due out some time in 2009, the plug-in version of the dual-mode hybrid will use a Lithium-Ion battery pack in place of the current nickel-metal hydride standard, and can be charged at any standard 110-volt electrical outlet (the voltage standard will likely differ for foreign versions of the vehicle).

GM has begun work on a Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid production vehicle, said GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner. The technological hurdles are real, but we believe they are also surmountable. I can’t give you a production date for our plug-in hybrid today. But I can tell you that this is a top priority program for GM, given the huge potential it offers for fuel-economy improvement.

Check out the press release from GM
Check out yet another press release from GM

Engineers at Sony are developing a set of wireless headphones that use a person’s skin to transmit a signal between the headpiece and music source.

The current system uses two electrodes encased in fabric to send an electrical signal through the human body between 500 KHz and 3 MHz. According to the patent the electrode doesn’t have to be touching the body, but must be very close to it, such as in a pocket or on a belt clip. A signal travels through the user’s skin and is transmitted to another electrode on the headset, which then plays the audio signal as any pair of wired headphones would. The patent describes the device as:

A transmitter for generating [an] electric field by transmitting a potential difference signal corresponding to transmission data from a transmitting electrode; and a receiver for receiving the data by reading the potential difference signal in [an] electric field by a receiving electrode.

According to a representative at Sony the company initially sought alternatives to the peculiar skin-driven system, but these posed more problems than one would think. An infrared system would require sensors on both the headset and transmitter to be in direct line of sight at all times, posing a number of usage issues that could render the headset useless. IrDA systems (Infrared transmission protocol) can also malfunction when being used in daylight (the folks at Nintendo had to learn that one the hard way.

Sony also said that Bluetooth would be considered for such a wireless headset, but despite its popularity the protocol poses its share of problems as well. As Bluetooth can broadcast a signal to distances of up to 30 feet, eavesdroppers could easily listen in to whatever was being played on audio source that the transmitter is connected to. And even with deliberate interference, a Bluetooth headset could be easily disrupted by errant Bluetooth signals from other devices in the immediate vicinity.

As such Sony has taken the road less traveled, using the human skin for the first time ever as a transmission medium for consumer electronics. Whether consumers warm up to the notion of voluntarily sending electrical signals through their body remains to be seen, but it seems as though one key design flaw could make that a moot point.

As indicated earlier, the system must be close to or in contact with the human body in order for the signal to be effective. While this would be a very useful technology for athletes, whom might wear their audio devices on an arm band or similar thing, the headset is rendered useless for users who don’t stow their iPod on arm or in pocket. This appears to be a drastic price to pay in the interest of nixing a cable, which can only be so disruptive.

Perhaps Sony is aiming this one specifically toward nano-equipped joggers and similar folk. But even if that’s the case the whole thing begs the question — why not put out a product that’s suitable for everyone? The very entity of the Playstation 3 may prove this to be a question that Sony is incapable of answering.

Via ars technica
Check out Sony’s patent filing.

Yes, it’s much longer than I said it was going to be, but TechFreep is finally back after some time. I apologize to everyone who kept checking back for new articles, but the move to L.A. was much more strenuous than I had initially anticipated.

Originally I had thought that we’d get here, spend a day moving everything into the apartment, and that I’d be able to resume writing as normal. Two weeks, ten Ikea trips, and eighteen box-moving-related bruises later I’ve realized that I was very, very wrong. Our apartment didn’t have a damn thing in it, not even a refrigerator, and it’s taken several long days to turn a completely empty space into an actual living space amidst exploring L.A. anew. We still don’t have TV or internet, but after finally going grocery shopping the other day my roommates and I had our first meal in the place. We’re finally in, and I’m clear to start writing on TechFreep again.

That said, TechFreep will not be the same as it used to be. In the past I’ve devoted upwards of a dozen hours per day to writing, as I was between school and moving and had the time to do so. As I pursue full-time employment my writing schedule won’t be as immaculate, and the number of articles could be limited to two or three daily. After I’m more established and comfortable here I hope to re-establish TechFreep as a full-time venture, perhaps with some more writers. But barring contact with a full-fledged benefactor, that likely won’t occur for some time.

In the mean time keep checking back for the same ol’ Tech-Freepy goodness, and I’ll do my best to keep the articles coming.