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Sky moves towards 3D broadcasts

Sky TV says it has made a significant step towards bringing 3D television to British viewers.

The satellite broadcaster says it has successfully tested the delivery of 3D programming to a domestic television, via a high-definition set-top box.

Sky has been filming a number of events using 3D cameras over recent months.

Such broadcasts would require the use of 3D televisions, not yet available in UK stores, and viewers would need to wear 3D polarising glasses.

Earlier this year BBC engineers broadcast a Six Nations rugby union international in 3D to an audience at a theatre in London.

Sky says it has gone further by showing that 3D could be delivered into homes, straight to its Sky+HD set-top box, without much difficulty.

Sky is stressing it is not making a product launch, but producing a technological demonstration.

“We have shown it is a technical reality,” Sky’s director of strategic product development, Gerry O’Sullivan, told BBC News.

At a demonstration at its West London headquarters, the company showed clips from programmes it had filmed in 3D, including a Ricky Hatton boxing match, a rugby union international and an episode of Gladiators.

Mr O’Sullivan said major TV manufacturers were beginning to look at building 3D sets and at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, a number of prototypes are expected to be on display.

He explained that for broadcasters, the move to 3D would not be anything like as expensive as the investment the industry had made in high-definition television.

“It’s not hugely costly,” he explained, “because it piggybacks on the investment in HD.”

Hollywood is beginning to invest heavily in 3D movie production and in Japan some television channels are already broadcasting in 3D.

It is a technology that first surfaced in the 1950s, but modern digital technology has brought new interest from producers and manufacturers.

Mr O’Sullivan dismissed the idea that it would appeal only to a small minority of viewers.

“I heard HD described as a niche product,” he said. “Now we’ve got nearly 600,000 HD customers.”

Yahoo throws down data gauntlet

Search engine Yahoo is to cut the time it stores personal data from 13 months to three.

It is hoping its decision will provide a benchmark for industry. Currently Google stores data for nine months and Microsoft for six months.

International data protection officials have been urging firms to do more to protect the data of users.

Privacy advocates have welcomed the move and challenged rivals to go even further.

“I would challenge industry to move to 30 days across the board. People should demand that their information is expunged as rapidly as possible,” said Simon Davies, head of Privacy International.

Business needs

A recent rash of data leaks has left users concerned and organisations embarrassed, he said.

“The less time data is online means less risk that rogue companies can establish dangerously comprehensive profiles on users,” he added.

Yahoo said its decision to cut the time it stores information gathered from web surfing came about following a “review of its data practices”.

“This policy represents Yahoo’s assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users,” said Anne Toth, Yahoo’s head of privacy.

As well as anonymising user log data, the policy will also apply to page views, page clicks and ad views and clicks.

But the search giant has reserved the right to keep data for up to six months if fraud or system security are involved.

Privacy campaigners have argued that firms are currently keeping data unnecessarily. Mr Davies is sceptical about what he described as “mixed messages” from industry.

“Only last year, firms were saying that they couldn’t go below 15 months but the logic of what Yahoo has done suggests there is no reason why they can’t go even lower,” he said.

Severed cable disrupts net access

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.

It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.

A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily.

Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.

Jonathan Wright - director of wholesale products at Interoute which manages part of the optical fibre network - told the BBC that the effects of the break would be felt for many days.

“This will grind economies to a halt for a short space of time,” he said “If you look at, say, local financial markets who trade with European and US markets, the speed at which they get live data will be compromised.”

“If you think how quickly trades can be placed, if they are suffering from bad latency times, then by the time a trade is placed, the market may well have moved on.”

The cause of the break is as yet unknown, although some seismic activity was reported near Malta shortly before the cut was detected.

In a statement released in relation to one of the breaks, France Telecom said: “The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear.”

The French firm said it was sending a ship out to fix the line between Italy and Egypt, although it could take until 31 December to fully repair the line.

The main damage is to the four submarine cables running across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal.

It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.

Earlier this year, the same line was damaged in the same area - off the Egyptian coast - although only two lines were snapped then.

“We’ve lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we’re looking at a total blackout in the Middle East,” said Mr Wright.

“These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we’re going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet,” he added.

“Normally you would expect to see one major break per cable per year. With four you should have an insurance policy. For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern.”

Trek creator’s widow dies aged 76

Actress Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, has died aged 76.

She died of leukaemia on Thursday at her home in Los Angeles, her family said in a statement.

The actress, who featured in nearly every Star Trek TV show and film, nurtured the legacy of the sci-fi series after her husband died in 1991.

She recently finished her role as the voice of the USS Enterprise computer in the new Star Trek film, due out in May.

Barrett Roddenberry was involved in the Star Trek universe for more than four decades.

She played the dark-haired Number One in the TV show’s original pilot, The Cage, but was recast as the blonde, mini-skirted Nurse Christine Chapel for the series, which launched in 1966.

During this time, she was romantically involved with creator Gene Roddenberry, and the couple married in Japan after the show was cancelled in 1969.

‘Vital role’

She went on to play smaller roles in all five Star Trek TV spin-offs and many of the Star Trek movie incarnations. She is perhaps best known, however, as the voice of the ship’s computer.

Barrett Roddenberry helped keep the franchise alive by inspiring fans and attending a major Star Trek convention each year.

“My mother truly acknowledged and appreciated the fact that Star Trek fans played a vital role in keeping the Roddenberry dream alive for the past 42 years,” her son Eugene Roddenberry Jr said in a statement on the official Roddenberry Web site.

“It was her love for the fans, and their love in return, that kept her going for so long after my father passed away.”

The website added that in lieu of flowers, the family have asked for donations be made to two animal rescue charities.

The actress is survived by her only son, Eugene.

A public memorial is expected to be scheduled for sometime after Christmas.

Microsoft issues patch to fix IE

Microsoft has issued a security patch to fix a critical vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser which it said has attacked over 2m Windows users.

The flaw is believed to have already infected as many as 10,000 websites.

The “zero day” exploit let criminals take over victims’ computers by steering them to infected websites.

Microsoft’s Christopher Budd said the software giant “encourages all IE customers to test and deploy this update as soon as possible”.

He also said the threat led Microsoft to mobilise security engineering teams worldwide to deliver a software cure “in the unprecedented time of eight days”.

The company’s security response team said the patch consists of more than 300 distinct updates for more than half-a-dozen versions of IE in around 50 languages.

“Even with that, the release Emergency Response process isn’t over,” said Security Response Alliance director Mike Reavey.

“There is additional support to customers and additional refinement of our product development efforts.”

Microsoft stressed that the flaw was proven to exist only in IE 7 on all applicable versions of Windows, but that IE 6 and the “beta” release of IE 8 were “potentially vulnerable”.

Users who have automatic updates turned on will receive the patch over the next 24 hours while others can access it via a download.

‘Wildfire’

The AZN Trojan has been making the rounds since the beginning of December but became public knowledge in the last week . Unlike other exploits, users only have to visit a malicious site with Trojans or other malware in order to become contaminated.

Once an infected web page is opened, malicious downloaders are installed on the computer designed to record keystrokes and steal passwords, credit card details and other financial information.

The sites affected are mostly Chinese and have been serving up programmes to steal passwords for computer games which can then be sold for cash on the black market.

Internet Explorer is the world’s most widely used web browser with nearly three quarters of the market share.

Microsoft estimated that one in every 500 Windows users had been exposed to sites that tried to exploit the flaw and the number of victims was increasing at a rate of 50% daily.

Researchers at the software security firm Trend Micro said attacks were spreading “like wildfire”.

“This vulnerability is being actively exploited by cyber-criminals and getting worse every day,” said the company’s advanced threat researcher Paul Ferguson.

Microsoft labelled the bug as “critical,” the most serious threat ranking in its four-step scoring programme.

Firefox update

The update is something of an unusual move for Microsoft and underscores the seriousness of the zero day flaw.

The company rarely issues security fixes for its software outside of its regular monthly patch updates.

Meanwhile Mozilla has released a scheduled update for its open source Firefox web browsers for at least 10 different vulnerabilities.

The bugs in the browser could have been “used to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing,” said Mozilla.

It is also reissuing calls for users to upgrade from Firefox 2.0 to Firefox 3.0 as soon as possible and said it is “not planning any further security and stability updates for Firefox 2″.

This means Mozilla will no longer support the Firefox 2 browser against future online scams and attacks.

Sonraki Sayfa »