The Audiophiliac wants to see your audio system

This is my system from a few years ago. The speakers are Magnepan 3.6s.

(Credit:
Wes Bender)

If you have a state-of-the-art high-end system, or a tricked out iPod speaker, we'd love to see it. Take an interesting picture of your headphones, Bluetooth speaker, turntable, home theater, or whatever you have. If you built your own speakers or amp, that's right up my alley!

Send JPEGs (not huge files) to theaudiophiliac (at) hotmail (dot) com. Of course, anyone submitting should be comfortable with the photos being publicly posted online "forever after." Please include your name (first name and first initial of your last name). And if you're up for it, tell us where you live.

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Big iPad game 'Infinity Blade: Dungeons' delayed again

Epic demoing Infinity Blade: Dungeons at the third-generation iPad event last March.

(Credit:
Donald Bell/CNET)

It's turning out to be a bumpier road than expected for high-profile iPad game Infinity Blade: Dungeons.

The game, which was previewed on-stage by Epic Games as part of Apple's debut of the third-generation
iPad last year, now faces further delay following the closure of Impossible Studios, the team put in charge of the project.

Epic today said it was closing the six month old studio and laying off its team, a move that means another delay for the unreleased game.

"When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team," Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney said in a post late Friday. "It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn't working out for Epic."

Back in October Epic said Dungeons had been delayed while Impossible reworked the focus of the game, which is part of the Infinity Blade universe -- Epic's highly successful venture on iOS.

The title was demoed on stage to show off the graphical prowess of Apple's third-generation iPad, which quadrupled the number of pixels from the previous generation machine, and added a quad-core graphics processor. At the time, Epic said simply that it was "coming soon." Apple proceeded to release a fourth-generation model just months later at its
iPad mini event last October, which further updated the device's graphics capabilities and other internal components.

Sweeney says the employees that the company is letting go will be given three months of severance, as well as the option to keep the Impossible Studios name and logo.

(via Gamespot)

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Guess what? Vine videos are longer than six seconds

It turns out that Vines are actually 6.5 seconds long, not six.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

Among the many curiosities about Twitter's Vine app has been how the company decided six seconds was the magic number for a clip's length.

Well, guess what? It turns out that the maximum length of a Vine isn't six seconds at all. In fact, they top out at 6.5 seconds.

And how do we know? After watching a Vine today that was tweeted by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, I came away with the feeling that it felt longer than advertised. A bit of quick work using iShowU by CNET videographer Jared Kohler then proved that a Vine works out to six seconds and 14 frames, played at 28.77 frames per second. In other words, almost exactly 6.5 seconds. Don't believe it? Grab a stopwatch and time the Vine below.

What does that mean? Well, it means you're actually getting 8.3 percent more video than you thought you were. And that's a good thing, right?

But the fact that the videos are really 6.5 seconds long does make one wonder why that's the length. At the time of Vine's launch last month, Twitter explained that the six-second limit was a choice made after lots of testing. "The team tested various video lengths, ranging from about four seconds to ten seconds, as they were building Vine," a Twitter spokesperson told CNET at the time. "They found that six seconds was the ideal length, from both the production and consumption side."

Aha! But then why is the real number 6.5 seconds? Is that extra half-second crucial for production and/or consumption? It's hard to say because Twitter didn't respond to a new request for comment. And because, let's be honest, an extra half a second isn't all that big a deal.

Still, if the folks at Vine were making an arbitrary decision about length, then why did they actually settle on 6.5 seconds instead of six? We'd love your thoughts -- even those that make fun of us for caring about small details like this. Please leave them in the comments section.

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Microsoft hits Reddit to address Surface Pro concerns

Microsoft's Surface Pro has come under a lot of scrutiny in reviews over the last 24 hours. Microsoft tried to address some of the issues that have been brought up.

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

Microsoft addressed Surface Pro issues with disk space and battery life, among other topics, in a Reddit AMA today.

The discussion was led by Panos Panay, head of the Surface team at Microsoft. He provided relatively lengthy responses to two issues that have emerged as shortcomings with the company's newest
tablet-laptop hybrid that runs
Windows 8 Pro (and is scheduled to go on sale Saturday).

What follows are some excerpts from Panay's as well as other team members' responses.

Battery life: "If you compare it to say a MacBook Air, you will quickly see that pound for pound in battery size vs. battery life, you will find optimizations that put Surface best in its class. That said, we picked a smaller battery to be sure we were able to give you the same performance and to keep it thin. This kept the weight under 2 lbs.... While these trade-offs are challenges as much as they are opportunities, we think given the performance and experience you will be getting, it is an exciting product.

And Panay addressed disk space, saying that Microsoft has freed up an additional 7GB to 8GB for users.

Storage Space and Pro 64GB model: We designed Surface Pro (and the allocation of disk space on our systems) to have the power of full Windows 8, the ability to have a simplified and fast upgrade to full Office, and the confidence of a recovery image already available on your device.... Initial reports out regarding available disk space were conservative (e.g., 23GB available on 64GB and 83GB available on the 128GB system), however our final production units are coming in with ~6-7GB additional free space.

Available disk space is a design choice and a tough one to make as an engineering team.... There have also been questions about why [Microsoft decided to include] the recovery image by default. Ideally, you will never need your recovery image, however this is a choice we would prefer the customer to make vs. having the customer need the recovery image not realizing they needed to create one themselves.

We decided to ship a Pro 64GB sku as it provides full Windows 8 and enough storage for a number of large application installs such as games, productivity apps, etc. which usually run in the multiple GBs.

And there were questions about display size scaling. In particular, one participant was concerned about Surface Pro's high resolution (1,920x1,080) being scaled to 150 percent on the desktop.

"I want to keep scaling at 150% on the Surface Pro, and have scaling on my external display at 100%. Are there plans to fix this in Windows 8?"

And the Surface team responded.

The Windows team is aggressively working on this feature to fix this for all high resolution Windows devices. We don't have a date yet to share, so sorry.

And the Surface team addressed Wi-Fi issues too.

Wi-Fi connection robustness has been improved with the Feb. 12 Windows Update. Another version is in the works and will release March 12.

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Where were you when the lights went out?

CBS News was inside the NFL operations booth when the lights went out.

Where was I when the lights went out?

I was at my post for the game in the CBS operations center inside the Superdome, sitting next to our head of NFL sales and our director of operations. As with every Super Bowl, we stayed in constant communication with the production truck to make sure all the commercials and promo spots played as scheduled. There are formats, rules, and procedures, and our job is to oversee them. We are there for quality control, and usually it all goes right.

Nothing prepared us for what we heard over the director's intercom: "The lights just went out in the stadium! Standby!"

Then we lost power in our area and the TVs went out. We did not know what was on the air -- or not on the air.

Did you ever see your life flash before your eyes? Childhood. School. Friends. The '60s (nice!). Marriage. Kids. Ice cream. That was it.

So many questions ran through my head: What was happening? Why? What would this mean? How long until it's fixed? What if it's not fixed? Are we safe? What happens to the commercials? And importantly: how does this affect CBS?

I left the trailer and headed inside the stadium tunnel; there was confusion, tech people running, bewilderment. But ultimately, and most importantly, there was calm.

It seemed that people were thinking, "What can I do, and how can I help?" And it showed.

I went back into our control room and we were on the air, reporting from a field camera that had power. I later learned that we had never gone off the air. The cause of the power outage is still unknown. But in the end, we had two football games separated by a mystery drama -- just what CBS does best!

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Report: Twitter buys social TV analytics company BlueFin Labs

A graphic used on Blue Fin Labs' Web site to illustrate its report on which Super Bowl commercials worked the best, and why.

(Credit:
Blue Fin Labs)

Twitter has reportedly acquired BlueFin Labs, which generates social TV analytics, in a deal which is said to be the social networking giant's biggest-ever.

According to Business Insider, Twitter has closed a deal to buy BlueFin, a company that specializes in helping media companies understand how people use social media in conjunction with their TV watching.

As Business Insider wrote, "Twitter's move into social TV makes a lot of sense. It hired a Head of TV last fall and there's a strong correlation between people watching shows and tweeting about them. Just look at last night's Super Bowl. With the help of a lengthy blackout, it was the most social event to ever air."

On its Web site, BlueFin is currently advertising its report on last night's Super Bowl. "On advertising's biggest day, which commercials succeeded in driving the social conversation and which fizzled? Our detailed report analyzes social chatter for Super Bowl spots: the winners, losers...and why."

Certainly, having the inside scoop on such information would help Twitter as it attempts to become more of a media company, and as it tries to bolster its advertising revenue by working hand-in-hand with brands and with TV networks. BlueFin has aimed to become a leader in the space by offering top-tier analysis of how "brands, agencies, and TV networks can tap into viewer commentary about shows and commercials to power insights, ad sales, and media buys."

Twitter did not respond to request for comment by CNET.

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Super Bowl does Wi-Fi on a massive scale

There should be no shortage of Wi-Fi at the Super Bowl. And the NFL want to make sure it stays that way.

The Wi-Fi network at the Superdome in New Orleans has been structured and reinforced to handle a stunning 30,000 simultaneous connections during the big game, starting shortly, between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens. Ars Technica reported that detail and lots more about the setup -- for instance, there 700 wireless access points inside the stadium, and 250 right outside for folks in the parking lots.

Clearly, the NFL understands that we're already deep in the
tablet and smartphone era when people expect easy, uninterrupted access to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and more.

But not unregulated access. Fans entering the Superdome are having their bags inspected for wireless gear that could undermine the robust functioning of the Wi-Fi network. There will be no "rogue access points," Dave Stewart, director of IT and production for Superdome management firm SMG, told Ars Technica:

Every device that enters the building has to go through a frequency scan and be authorized to enter. At the perimeter the devices are identified and tagged. If they present a potential for interference, they are remediated at that moment. Either the channel is changed or it is denied access. It's all stopped at the perimeter for this event.

One of the biggest worries is about devices such as wireless cameras tuned to the 2.4GHz frequency range.

The new Wi-Fi network was installed just this season, and though there were some trial runs during regular-seasons games, the Super Bowl marks the first time the network has been publicly advertised as available to all fans, according to Ars Technica. Verizon Wireless built the network, using Cisco gear.

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For Valentine's Day, Cupid ditches arrows, opts for e-cards

Admit it. You've always wanted to love like John Travolta.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Romance isn't dead.

It's merely been reduced to the level of a friend request, a poke, and a privacy control.

Often in that order.

How else can one interpret the staggeringly predictable research -- performed on behalf of SOASTA, the oddly named company that performs cloud and mobile testing -- that suggests more than a third of American human beings will send an e-card for Valentine's Day?

It's true that some e-cards can be amusing, uplifting, even offering an instant surprise on an otherwise moribund day. But can they truly incite a loving feeling on America's most commercially amorous day of the year?

You will be stunned into loving only yourself for the rest of your days when I tell you that -- of the 2,474 American adults surveyed -- men seem a little keener on Valentine e-cards than women.

Indeed, this research offered that 47 percent of men between the ages of 35 and 44 indicated that the love of their life deserved merely a few clicks and a canned expression of love.

Next in enthusiasm were men aged 18-34, 41 percent of whom will let their fingers do the loving.

But let's not besmirch these men any more than they deserve. 41 percent of women aged 18-34 also claimed that e-cards were their chosen method to stroke their chosen one.

Clearly, convenience is at the heart of this e-card enthusiasm, just as it is at the heart of modern romance.

Respondents were radiant at the idea that e-cards are free. 35 percent beamed at the fact that they offer the possibility of animation. And a deeply serious 34 percent felt the need to point out they were environmentally friendly.

A surprisingly paltry 6 percent admitted that they loved e-cards because you could happily include NSFW content.

More Technically Incorrect

Because ours is an acquisitive society, those who send these free, convenient things to express their temporarily undying love actually expect something in return.

A kiss is expected by 8 percent. A fulsome 10 percent expect sex. They must be among those who believe you can get something for nothing.

There will be those who reach for their Latin and mutter: "Sic transit tragoedia mundi." (Oh, look it up, e-carders.)

But when a whole new personal version of oneself is being created and spun online, who can be surprised that other expressions of love might seem not merely passe but also downright unexpressive?

E-cards surely allow you a far greater breadth than paper cards or balloons to display precisely what you really feel about the most important person in your life.

Which, in the case of 3 percent of the respondents in this moving survey, is "the hot receptionist at work."

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Battle cry: HTC's CEO leads the 'M7' chant

HTC CEO Peter Chou tests the upcoming M7 smartphone.

(Credit:
cnyes.com)

Do you know who's overflowing with excitement for the not-yet-official HTC M7 smartphone? None other than HTC CEO Peter Chou, of course.

A video from HTC's year-end party shows the company's head honcho on stage playing with the M7, and even snapping photos of the crowd. CEO Chou can be seen rallying a team of employees with a battle cry.

During the video, Chou chants "HTC" a few times, followed by a couple of rounds of "M7," and finally capped off with screams of "HTC One!"

The grainy video seemingly confirms recent rumors of two color options for the anticipated flagship device; Chou holds both a silver and black version of the handset suspected to be the M7. Strangely, the phones have what appear to be a pair of horizontal lines across the back.

The leaked photos and renders we've seen thus far do not show these lines, so maybe there's some serious 11th hour work from Team M7.

HTC has scheduled a pair of press events for February 19 where it is expected that the M7 will take center stage. CNET will be in attendance and will provide an early impressions of the new smartphone.

I recently penned an open letter to HTC where I suggested that the company scream from the rooftops about the new device. Perhaps the CEO has taken my advice.

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Popular security utilities for OS X put to the test

Even though the prevalence of threats for the Mac remains relatively minimal, malware on OS X has raised its ugly head a bit in the past few years. Some in the Mac community have been affected by threats such as the Flashback malware, DNSChanger, and the MacDefender Trojan, among others. As a result, while the most effective way of keeping a Mac secure is to follow safe browsing and computing practices, you may also be considering using anti-malware utilities. But which ones perform best?

Recently,
Mac security analyst Thomas Reed attempted to tackle this question in part by putting a number of popular antivirus utilities to the test. To do so, Reed took a collection of 128 malware samples that included both recent active malware threats and extinct threats, and ran a number of popular antivirus utilities to see how they managed this collection. Arguably, the sample size of 128 might not be enough to give a complete assessment of these programs' capabilities, but it should be adequate enough for comparative purposes.

The antivirus tools used in the tests included a number of free and paid scanner packages from Avast, VirusBarrier, Sophos, Dr. Web, ESET, Kaspersky, F-Secure, ClamXav, Norton, MacKeeper, and its included Avira engine, among others. How did each of these do?

While most utilities were able to detect many of the threats run past them in the tests, the difference in what was detected is a bit surprising. Only about half of those tested were able to detect over 90 percent of the threats, and about a third were only able to detect up to 75 percent of the threats. Thomas offered a passing grade to those that were able to detect 79 percent of threats or more, which included about three fourths of the programs, but the determination of what constitutes acceptable performance is up to the end user.

Those at the top of the list were Avast, VirusBarrier, Sophos, and Dr. Web Light; however, not far behind were ESET, Avira (and MacKeeper, which uses the Avira engine), F-Secure, and Kaspersky.

The anti-malware tools that did not fare as well included the popular ClamXav, Norton's Antivirus and iAntivirus (the latter of which has no auto-updates and therefore had out-of-date definitions) and McAfee, which detected between 50 to 80 percent of threats. Two utilities tested, WebRoot SecureAnywhere and SecureMac's MacScan, both detected under 30 percent of the threats.

While performance is likely the primary criterion people use to choose a specific anti-malware program, keep in mind there are other factors to consider beyond such test results. Despite being thorough, some security software packages include a number of additional features that can be a bit intrusive in the system and have at times caused stability and performance problems for some users. Others still might not include all of the features that one wants in a security package; for example, Norton's iAntivirus lacks an auto-update feature, so its definitions database is up to a few months out of date. Therefore, before installing a security package, be sure to read reviews and user experiences about the latest versions of each and see how they have behaved in different setups.

For a full look at his results and analysis, head over to Thomas Reed's Mac antivirus testing to see the methods, results, objections, and special cases considered for these tests.

---

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

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65,000 ping-pong balls turn pool party into cool party

Who would've known ping pong balls have so many uses?

(Credit:
Red Paper Heart)

Pools aren't just for swimming, you know. Brooklyn art studio Red Paper Heart made some pretty nifty art with a swimming hole and 65,000 ping-pong balls. Before you dismiss that as an exercise in lunacy, take a look at a clever interactive pool party experience for yourself in the video below.

Red Paper Heart created the mesmerizing show in conjunction with city guide Web site UrbanDaddy, all for a tequila promotional event in Hamptons, N.Y.. The art studio programmed some software (using C++) to control the projector-driven light show that reacts to music. To enhance the visuals, the group enlisted a team of synchronized swimmers and some tuxedo-clad scuba divers to class up the joint.

"We created an application which mapped to the pool and displayed a floating river of graphics, pulled by an invisible tide. Audio reactive visuals bumped along with the various DJs and musical acts taking place poolside," Red Paper Heart said in a statement.

Anyone else seeing bulk orders of ping-pong balls for the summer?

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'Downton Abbey' as SNES video game: Fluff those pillows!

Test your fluffing skills.

(Credit:
Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

It's fun to sit around and play "What if?" What if Google acquired Microsoft? What if Superman and Spider-Man made a movie together? What if "Downton Abbey" were a Super Nintendo game? We have a pretty good answer to that last question.

YouTube user Bill Kiley posted a video showing what the imported PBS megahit would look like as an SNES game. It comes complete with an insanely catchy digital ditty that's perfect for the SNES period. As a new footman at Downton, you're faced with a myriad of tasks that come fast and furious.

First, you have to find the Earl of Grantham's misplaced cigars. Then, you must investigate a possible poisoning in the kitchen. Later, the head housemaid, Anna Bates, demands you push "L" and "R" as fast as you can to fluff pillows for the guests.

There's a cutlery identification challenge that most people in the world would fail miserably at. The aristocracy continues to boss you around, sending you off to locate the Dowager Countess's hidden jewels. A mock-up image of the fictional game box calls it "tastefully exciting."

Comments from "Downton" fans on the YouTube page are fairly effusive. One viewer even declares it to be better than the movie "Titanic." It seems like the legions of Downton fans would pay good money to play this game, me included. Are you listening, Nintendo? I want to fluff some pillows with a game controller ASAP.

(Via Geek When Spoken To)

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Twitter acquires Crashlytics crash reporting service

Crashlytics announced that it has merged with Twitter.

(Credit:
Crashlytics)

Twitter has bought Crashlytics, a startup whose crash reporting tool has been incorporated into a wide variety of iOS apps including Vine, Yelp, Kayak, TaskRabbit, and Waze.

In a blog post today, Crashlytics co-founders Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang announced that the company is "joining the flock," the term often used when people or companies are hired or acquired by Twitter:

We started Crashlytics a little over a year ago to address a huge hole in mobile app development. With hundreds of millions of devices in use around the world, it was impossible for developers to fully test every edge-case and catch every bug before release. Even worse, when problems did crop up, it was often difficult and complicated to find the root cause. App developers were stuck with little insight into what happened and forced to rely on vague end-user feedback to diagnose problems.

We built Crashlytics to deliver the world's most powerful and lightest-weight crash reporting solution. With us, developers gain instant visibility into the precise line of code that caused a crash, enabling them to more easily fix issues. Since our iOS launch, we've had the privilege of working with thousands of incredible app developers, from those building independent passion-projects to many of the top iOS apps available today.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, although the company did tweet news of the acquisition.

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Pornographic video clips already showing up on Twitter's Vine

Less than a week after Twitter unveiled Vine, the video-sharing app apparently has developed a porn problem.

Released Thursday, the app for iPhone and
iPod Touch lets anyone create and share six-second clips, but it also has become a popular venue for male genitalia and pornographic movies taped off TVs and laptops. As first pointed out last night by The New York Times' Nick Bilton, searches for #porn, #sex, and other associated tags brings up a handful of videos featuring male exhibitionism and other activity.

While Vine's terms of service don't expressly forbid sexually explicit content, Twitter does encourage users to use good judgment when posting content:

You are responsible for your use of the Services, for any Content you post to the Services, and for any consequences thereof. The Content you submit, post, or display will be able to be viewed by other users of the Services and through third party services and websites. You should only provide Content that you are comfortable sharing with others under these Terms.

However, Vine users can flag videos they find offensive. If clips receive enough complaints, Twitter will add a warning still to the beginning of the video that users have to bypass to see the clip.

Long an advocate for freedom of expression, Twitter has been reluctant to censor tweets. A year ago, the microblogging site announced it would be willing to remove tweets on a country-by-country basis when there are local restrictions against specific content in the tweets.

CNET has contacted Twitter for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

While the NSFW content might not violate Twitter's TOS, Apple's App Store guidelines state that "apps containing pornographic material, defined by Webster's Dictionary as 'explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings,' will be rejected."

Apple recently removed an app called 500px, presumably because of its photo-sharing capabilities, which might allow users to search for and find naked bodies. CNET has also contacted Apple for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

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In Swartz protest, Anon hacks U.S. site, threatens leaks

In response to the death of tech activist Aaron Swartz, hacktivist collective Anonymous hacked a U.S. government Web site related to the justice system and posted a screed saying it would begin leaking a cache of government documents if the justice system is not reformed.

The group hacked the Web site for the United States Sentencing Commission late Friday, posting a message about what it's calling "Operation Last Resort," along with a set of downloadable encrypted files it said contain sensitive information. The sentencing commission is the caretaker of the guidelines for sentencing in U.S. federal courts.

"Two weeks ago today, a line was crossed," the group's statement reads. "Two weeks ago today, Aaron Swartz was killed. Killed because he faced an impossible choice. Killed because he was forced into playing a game he could not win -- a twisted and distorted perversion of justice -- a game where the only winning move was not to play."

The recent suicide of Swartz, a proponent of freely accessible information, has been blamed by some on what they say were outrageously aggressive efforts on the part of the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts to punish Swartz for his alleged theft of millions of articles from a database of academic journals. The 26-year-old Swartz, who struggled with bouts of depression, had been charged with 13 felonies and threatened with decades in prison and fines exceeding $1 million. U.S. Attorney Carmin Ortiz says Swartz' lawyers were also offered a plea bargain in which he'd plead guilty and serve perhaps 6 months.

Anonymous encouraged its followers to download the files on the hacked site, a set of nine downloads named after the U.S. Supreme Court's nine justices and collectively referred to by the hacking collective as a "warhead."

"Warhead-US-DOJ-LEA-2013.AEE256 is primed and armed. It has been quietly distributed to numerous mirrors over the last few days and is available for download from this website now. We encourage all Anonymous to syndicate this file as widely as possible."

The group wouldn't specify what, exactly, is in the files, saying only that "the contents are various and we won't ruin the speculation by revealing them. Suffice it to say, everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public. At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file."

The contents of the encrypted files can apparently be accessed only with a decryption key, and Anonymous said it didn't necessarily want to provide that key to its followers -- it mentioned "collateral damage" as a result of any leaks and said "It is our hope that this warhead need never be detonated." But the group said the U.S. government must begin acting on reforms to the justice system suggested by the system's critics, and in spelling out its demands more specifically, it mentioned plea bargaining and suggested the overhaul of legislation such as the mid-1980s antihacking law entitled the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

...in order for there to be a peaceful resolution to this crisis, certain things need to happen. There must be reform of outdated and poorly-envisioned legislation, written to be so broadly applied as to make a felony crime out of violation of terms of service, creating in effect vast swathes of crimes, and allowing for selective punishment. There must be reform of mandatory minimum sentencing. There must be a return to proportionality of punishment with respect to actual harm caused, and consideration of motive and mens rea [criminal intent]. The inalienable right to a presumption of innocence and the recourse to trial and possibility of exoneration must be returned to its sacred status, and not gambled away by pre-trial bargaining in the face of overwhelming sentences, unaffordable justice, and disfavourable odds. Laws must be upheld unselectively, and not used as a weapon of government to make examples of those it deems threatening to its power.

The group said it had acquired the files by compromising various government Web sites and installing "leakware," which it has since removed to cover its tracks.

Here's the video Anon posted on the commission's site. A Google cache of the hacked home page, which includes the text version of the screed, can be seen here.

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How to use the Font panel in OS X

Many programs, such as Microsoft Office, support their own interfaces for various fonts you may have installed on your Mac; however, many other programs like TextEdit and Apple's Pages use Apple's central Font panel to provide font management. This panel can usually be invoked by pressing Command-T in programs that support it, where you will be presented with a column-oriented view of font collections that you can navigate through, select, and set the size for.

While convenient for quickly selecting and setting font sizes, the Font panel also contains a number of additional features that can be applied to your text.

The Font panel by default includes a preview window and effects settings in addition to listing your fonts.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

Preview font style
The first feature may or may not already be enabled in the Font panel, but its function is to preview the font you have selected. Though some programs support previewing fonts in a drop-down font menu, this can sometimes bog a system down if you have hundreds of fonts installed that all are accessed and loaded at once (though modern systems handle this far better). To preview a font, simply locate the small dot slider at the top of the Font panel and drag it down to reveal the preview area, or select "Show Preview" from the small gear menu to the bottom left. Now you can see the font name displayed in its actual font, and at the size you have selected.

Set color, style, and other effects
Another feature that is usually enabled by default is the effects bar, where you can set styles like underscores, strikethroughs, font color, and highlight colors. You can also enable text shadows in programs that support this. This bar should be between the preview and above the font listings, so if it is not there, enable it by selecting "Show Effects" from the gear menu.

Set up favorites and collections
The Font panel will show you all fonts, but does so by listing those in the collection you have chosen. The system includes a number of built-in collections such as those for language-specific fonts, fixed-width fonts, fun fonts, and those that are most compatible with specific tasks like PDF or Web content management. You can add or remove any font from these collections by dragging them to and from the collections.

The "Edit Sizes" option in the gear menu will bring up this settings panel. Note that by resizing the Font panel window and preview areas you can collapse the standard column-browser view, as shown here.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

You can also create your own font collections by clicking the plus button and then dragging fonts to it. Apple does include a couple of special collections, which are the Recently Used list and the favorites. The favorites will contain specific font and size pairings that you have added to this list by choosing "Add to favorites" from the gear menu.

Hidden settings (gear menu)
The Font panel does have some additional features that are relatively hidden but may be exceptionally useful; they can be accessed through the gear menu. The first of these is the option to adjust the list and range of sizes that are available in the Font panel. While you can manually change the value in the Size box to the right of the panel to adjust the font, the selectable common font size numbers below this box can be customized. To do this, choose "Edit Sizes" from the gear menu and you can add or remove sizes from the list, show or hide aspects of the size controls, and set the maximum and minimum point values of the slider.

The second hidden feature is the Typography panel, which may be the most useful hidden feature in the Font panel. As with the others, this one is available in the gear menu, and will present contextually relevant font- and character-specific typography options you can use in your document. These include the enabling of ligatures, and special treatment of numbers, capitals, and numbering styles.

The Typography panel holds a number of secrets for making full use of a specific font.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler)

Another aspect of this panel holds an answer to a question many may have about how to use some fancy characters that are previewed in fonts like the stylistic Zapfino. The preview text for these fonts may contain elaborate characters, but when you type these characters, you get a fairly bland version of them. To get to these characters, you can use the glyph variants that will appear in the Typography panel for characters in fonts that support them. You can select individual character variants at the bottom of the Typography panel, or you can choose a predefined glyph variant set and end up with dramatically different styles when using the same font.

One of the more useful Typography panel features is the contextual fractional forms option, where if enabled will take any fraction you type and condense it into a character-size fraction. Many fonts support common fractions such as halves, thirds, and fourths, but if you need a similar view for 1/243, you can do so with contextual fractional forms. Another useful option is the conversion of lower- and upper-case characters into small capital letters, which is quite convenient for headlines, signs, and other needs for emboldening text.

The last features in the Font panel gear menu are quick access links to other font-handling features in the OS. One of these is the colors panel (which is also available in the effects bar), but you can also access the Character Viewer and open the Font Book program to better manage your font collections.

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Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
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View some early Vine blockbusters: 6 seconds of pleasure

CNET test cat Dashiell poses for a Vine video.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

Six seconds isn't a lot of time to work with. That's the length of video Twitter's new Vine service dishes out. The looping videos can be embedded in tweets and have already been described as "Instagram for video." It's out as of today as an app for iOS, with other platforms in the works.

The short time limit isn't stemming the flow of creativity from Vine's early users. So far, we've seen everything from a monster flick to a moving sale to a recipe demonstration. Here's a roundup of some noteworthy early Vine videos.

Ian Padgham, Twitter's illustrator and video animator, brings us this 6-second take on a monster movie. Warning: cartoonish violence.

CNET Associate Editor Emily Dreyfuss has discovered Vine as a way to share the shortest garage sale in history. The cat is not included in the giveaway, unfortunately.

Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann demonstrates his extremely quick recipe for making steak tartare.

So far, many Vine videos seem to be of people's computer screens. This is probably just a function of folks being eager to try out the service, but still chained to their desks during working hours.

Where there are visuals, there will usually be porn. Expect plenty of Vine users to make attempts at 6 seconds of sexy time. Browsing Vine, I didn't see too much in the way of risque videos, but there was at least one artfully shot clip featuring a bikini-clad woman.

Besides porn and monitors, Vine should be a big hit with animal lovers. The number of dog videos is already reaching alarming proportions and I haven't even started looking for cats yet. I can't stop watching this hyper dachshund on loop.

Naturally, my first choppy post to Vine was of the CNET test cats sleeping on duty. I'd fire them, but I'm too busy being mesmerizing by the flood of Vine videos on Twitter.

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Apple: Some Maps fixes out already, more this year

Apple offered some minor details on improvements it has made, and still has in the pipeline for its mobile maps software.

"We've made a number of improvements to Maps," Apple CEO Tim Cook told Wall Street analysts during the company's first quarter earnings call this afternoon. Some of those include improved satellite and flyover imagery as well as local information for businesses, he said.

Cook said that people are using Maps "significantly" more than they were before
iOS 6, which added Apple's controversial mapping software and replaced Google. Nonetheless, there's room for improvement, Cook added, saying "we'll keep on working on this" and that the company planned to "roll out more improvements during the rest of the year."

Cook publicly apologized about the software last September, roughly a week after it was released to consumers, saying "we are extremely sorry for the frustration" it caused. Some of those frustrations include missing or inaccurate locations, low quality satellite imagery in densely populated areas, and cosmetic issues with its 3D flyover feature.

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Foil face-recognition cameras with Privacy Visor

Worried about all those security cameras tracking your every move? Try rocking one of these visors and enjoy anonymity once again.

At least that's what Isao Echizen from Japan's National Institute of Informatics is trying to achieve with the Privacy Visor (PDF).

Developed with Seiichi Gohshi of Kogakuin University, the visor has a near-infrared light source that messes up cameras but doesn't affect the wearer's vision, according to the institute.

They're hardly fashionable, but the lights create noise that prevents computer vision algorithms from extracting the features needed to recognize a face.

The prototype visor has 11 LEDs around the eyes and nose. They run off a lithium ion battery.

In a small experiment using OpenCV face-detection software and 10 subjects, the detection rate decreased to zero regardless of distance when the Privacy Visor was used.

"The possibility of photographs taken in secret and unintentional capture in camera images resulting in the invasion of privacy has already been pointed out in Europe and other regions," the institute writes in a release.

"Due to concerns about the invasion of privacy from SNS facial recognition functions, the European Union has requested the invalidation of facial recognition in Facebook intended for European users."

While the research was prompted by the popularity of phone cameras, social networks, and Google Images, as well as related privacy concerns, Echizen believes the visor could also be used to prevent privacy infringement through augmented-reality applications.

What do you think? Would you put these on to thwart the all-seeing eye?

(Via BBC News)

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Sony paints super slim PS3 in red and blue

The blue super slim PlayStation 3 breaks away from the anemic world of black electronics.

(Credit:
Sony Computer Entertainment Japan)

The world isn't black and white anymore for the super slim PS3.

Sony's Japanese
PlayStation division released information today about several new color options -- Azurite Blue and Garnet Red -- coming soon to the CECH-4000 series PlayStation 3. The reveal follows a German Amazon listing for the same variations that appeared last week.

As with any multi-territory release, what exactly prospective buyers of the new PS3 colors get depends on the region. For example, the European red and blue super slim PS3 packages cost 329.95 Euro ($439) and feature built-in 500GB hard drive, two color-matching Dualshock 3 controllers, and a February 20 release date. In contrast, the Japanese red and blue super slim PS3 runs for 24,980 yen ($278) while only offering a 250GB hard drive and one color-matching controller -- as well as a February 28 release date.

It's fair to say that when and if these colorful PS3 gaming consoles come to the U.S., the packages may likely cost around the $299 baseline seen at retail. Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment on availability of the red and blue PS3 in the States, but we'll update this post with their response.

You'd probably be able to see this thing from a country mile away.

(Credit:
Sony Computer Entertainment Japan)

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