China cracks down on virtual economy
Faced with the prospect of an underground virtual economy developing inside internet games, the Chinese government is cracking down on those who use virtual money to buy real-world goods. With millions of young Chinese regularly playing online games, the practice of trading in-game currency or virtual credits for real goods is growing in popularity - and is even so profitable that it has led to the creation of a virtual sweatshop industry known as gold farming . But according to a joint statement from the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Culture, new rules will be put in place to stop the trade of virtual currency for real items. "The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services," it said. Media reports suggest government officials are largely concerned with the creation of an uncontrollable black market that operates in parallel to the Chinese economy, rather than in closing down traders themselves. And although this is being reported in some places as a potential death knell to gold farming entirely, players will still be able to buy virtual goods with virtual cash. Earlier this year we reported on the business of gold farming - an industry that seems almost too surreal and postmodern to be true: Workers can expect to earn between £80-£120 a month which, given the long hours and night shifts, can amount to as little as 30p an hour. After completing his shift, Li is given a basic meal of rice, meat and vegetables and falls into a bunk bed in a room that eight other gold farmers share. His wages may be low, but food and accommodation are included. These virtual industries sound surreal, but they are fast entering the mainstream. According to a report by Richard Heeks at Manchester University, an estimated 400,000 Asian workers are now employed in gold farming in a trade worth up to £700m a year. This new law appears to be the latest step in trying to bring the legal systems of the real world and virtual worlds in line with each other . It will be interesting to see where things go from here: GamePolitics suggests the first result may be to drive up the price of virtual goods inside games like World of Warcraft. Games Internet Virtual worlds Computing E-commerce China guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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China cracks down on virtual economy
Richard Norton-Taylor on government plans to protect against cyber-attack
Richard Norton-Taylor, security editor, on British intelligence agencies' plans to protect against cyber-attack
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Richard Norton-Taylor on government plans to protect against cyber-attack
Tackling cyber crime together | Albena Spasova
Cyber crime costs the EU billions of euros each year – but to defeat it, we need better co-operation between member states Gordon Brown has announced the creation of a new UK cyber-security centre to combat growing attacks on computer systems within government departments and big business.
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Tackling cyber crime together | Albena Spasova
Ask Jack: 25 June 2009
Laptop DJ I am a DJ making tentative steps into digital music. I have a MacBook, which I will incorporate into my sets. How can I ensure music CDs are imported at the highest possible quality? Also, what is the difference between a music file of 320kbps and a WAV file? Stuart Eve JS: For maximum sound quality you will need to do some "secure ripping," where the standard is a Windows-only program, EAC (Exact Audio Copy). The guide at Hydrogen Audio reckons XLD (X Lossless Decoder) is a Mac equivalent, and "it's the only application for Mac OS/X that uses the AccurateRip database used by both EAC and dbPowerAMP". Max looks like a good alternative. WAV, the waveform audio format, is a Microsoft file format that usually contains uncompressed audio using linear pulse code modulation or LPCM. Audio CDs also use LPCM encoding, so a WAV file can provide the same sound quality as the CD. (The Mac equivalent is AIFF.) WAV files are easy to edit but very large, as shown by the number of tracks on an audio CD. Their size can be reduced by using a lossless compression system such as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). However, most people convert to a "lossy" format such as MP3, AAC or WMA. This produces very small files, but there is inevitably some loss of quality. Whether the difference is audible is another matter. Briefly, very few untutored people can hear the difference between a 256kbps LAME-encoded MP3 file and a WAV file. (You can learn to hear differences, but why would you want to?) However, this depends on the quality of the reproduction
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Ask Jack: 25 June 2009
Intel innovation lights up its 2009 research day
Intel's 'show and tell' event allowed the company to highlight how it hopes to harmonise its research and business objectives Traffic lights will communicate directly with cars, if an Intel research project comes to fruition. Also, "my taillight will communicate with your headlight," says Intel's Vu Nguyen, "using Visible Light Communication (VLC): imagine morse code, but very fast. You can't see it, but the light is flickering." The idea behind VLC is to provide safety features such as "brake assist", so if the car in front brakes, your car will hit the brakes before you do. It sounds a bit of a long shot because of the infrastructure required. However, there's already a Visible Light Communications Consortium (vlcc.net) and Intel wants to be in at the beginning, helping to establish standards and developing the building blocks that companies will use to make products
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Intel innovation lights up its 2009 research day
Intel innovation lights up its 2009 research day
Intel's 'show and tell' event allowed the company to highlight how it hopes to harmonise its research and business objectives Traffic lights will communicate directly with cars, if an Intel research project comes to fruition. Also, "my taillight will communicate with your headlight," says Intel's Vu Nguyen, "using Visible Light Communication (VLC): imagine morse code, but very fast. You can't see it, but the light is flickering." The idea behind VLC is to provide safety features such as "brake assist", so if the car in front brakes, your car will hit the brakes before you do. It sounds a bit of a long shot because of the infrastructure required. However, there's already a Visible Light Communications Consortium (vlcc.net) and Intel wants to be in at the beginning, helping to establish standards and developing the building blocks that companies will use to make products. That's an approach Intel has already taken with USB, Wi-Fi, WiMax and other standards, and VLC has a particular appeal: you don't need a licence to use light for signalling. A day at the museum Nguyen, a senior technology evangelist in Intel's research department, was demonstrating a system mockup with a car dashboard, new LED traffic lights and a big screen at Intel's eighth annual Research Day, held last week in the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California. A working model of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine on the museum's ground floor reminded us how much IT progress depends on manufacturing capabilities. Research Day was "show and tell" on a grand scale, and Intel flew in technology journalists – not just from Europe but from Australia, Japan and other countries – to enjoy the experience.
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Intel innovation lights up its 2009 research day
Read me first: Raising the cost of paperwork errors will improve accuracy
It's a sad, horrific story. Homeowner returns to find his house demolished. The demolition company was hired legitimately but there was a mistake and it demolished the wrong house . The demolition company relied on GPS co-ordinates, but requiring street addresses isn't a solution. A typo in the address is just as likely, and it would have demolished the house just as quickly. The problem is less how the demolishers knew which house to knock down, and more how they confirmed that knowledge. They trusted the paperwork, and the paperwork was wrong. Informality works when everybody knows everybody else. When merchants and customers know each other, government officials and citizens know each other, and people know their neighbours, people know what's going on. In that sort of milieu, if something goes wrong, people notice. In our modern anonymous world, paperwork is how things get done. Traditionally, signatures, forms, and watermarks all made paperwork official. Forgeries were possible but difficult. Today, there's still paperwork, but for the most part it only exists until the information makes its way into a computer database. Meanwhile, modern technology – computers, fax machines and desktop publishing software – has made it easy to forge paperwork. Every case of identity theft has, at its core, a paperwork failure. Fake work orders, purchase orders, and other documents are used to steal computers, equipment, and stock. Occasionally, fake faxes result in people being sprung from prison. Fake boarding passes can get you through airport security
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Read me first: Raising the cost of paperwork errors will improve accuracy
Pentagon creates ‘cyber command’ for waging online warfare
Department of Defence sanctions creation of new, united military command focused on protecting America from online attack - and waging information warfare America has confirmed that it will be creating a new Pentagon "cyber command" to bring together the country's various hi-tech military units under one roof. US defence secretary Robert Gates ordered the formation of the group earlier today, following a period of debate over the best way to defend the country from attacks over the internet. The command - which will unite a string of organisations run by the army, navy, air force - plans to tie them together into a single, coherent group that is able to both defend the United States from information warfare and strike out at hostile nations if necessary. The Department of Defence said that the group is set to begin operating later this year, and plans to be fully operation by October 2010. The move comes amid growing concern over the possibility of and the threat of cyber-espionage - including perceived attacks from inside China and Russia. In recent months a series of leaks have revealed security breaches – including the US electricity grid and the theft of documents detailing the $300bn Joint Strike Fighter project. Though it is usually impossible to trace the perpetrators of such actions, US officials have said they suspect that such attacks are sponsored by a foreign state as part of an ongoing espionage campaign. Last week Gates's deputy, William Lynn, said that cyber warfare is now one of the biggest challenges to the US military. "Once the province of nations, the ability to destroy via cyber means now also rests in the hands of small groups and individuals: from terrorist groups to organized crime, hackers to industrial spies to foreign intelligence services," he said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This is not some future threat. The cyber threat is here today; it is here now." According to reports, the front runner to take control of the new organisation is General Keith Alexander, currently the director of the National Security Agency, which has run an extended campaign to take control of the nation's cyberdefences. Last month President Obama publicly committed to creating a new White House role to oversee the civil aspect of cyberdefence - treating the country's digital networks as a "strategic national asset" for the first time. "Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security priority," he said at the time. "We will deter, prevent, detect and defend against attacks and recover quickly." United States Defence policy Internet Computing Data and computer security Hacking guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Pentagon creates 'cyber command' for waging online warfare
Steve Jobs’ liver transplant and how it will affect Apple
Over the weekend it transpired that the boss of Apple has had a liver transplant. Cue sharp intake of breath among geeks everywhere. At last a reason for his weight loss and the mystery break from work. But now he's coming back.
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Steve Jobs' liver transplant and how it will affect Apple
iPhone 3GS review | Stephen Fry
The new 3GS version of Apple's must-have phone is a triumph for a company already at the top of its game. One self-confessed fan is suitably smitten A little under a year ago in this very newspaper I reviewed the Apple iPhone 3G and its new firmware release: "Now that the Applications store is up and running," I wrote, "you will soon find it a very common sight indeed to see people crowded around each other's iPhones showing off the latest impossible, breathtaking and ground-breaking application. 'Ah, but mine can do this!' will be heard in every cafe and bar. Satirical sketches will be written and performed on Channel 4 mocking the trend. Once again Apple has changed the rules and nothing will be ever be quite the same again." It is very rare for any prophetic utterance of mine to bear fruit, but in this case it seems I was bang on the money. On 11 July 2008 the Apple iTunes App Store opened its virtual doors and the world changed. The diversity, originality and imagination that has since gone into the authoring of apps has created, from the standingest of starts, a whole new business model, and one that benefits cottage industry amateurs quite as much as established software houses. With over 50,000 apps and more than 1bn downloads, it is hardly surprising that Blackberry, Nokia, Microsoft and Google have all now jumped on the app emporium bandwagon. Apple has shown that a mobile phone can be a pedometer, a restaurant guide (one which can make the reservation, direct you there and let you know which kinds of sustainable seafood you can order with a clear conscience), an ensemble of musical instruments that can be blown down, tapped and strummed, a library, a periodic table, a performer of magic tricks, a translator, a Skype phone, a Twitter client, a radio, a games platform and a device that can set your home satellite TV to record any programme you like wherever you are in the world. Not to mention a fart machine and perpetrator of other mad, pointless and preposterous one-time-use pranks, japes and wheezes. Now that the others are all playing catch-up, it is easy to forget what a risk Apple took in creating a market out of nowhere.
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iPhone 3GS review | Stephen Fry