MPGH News (2/1/13)

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20th Edition
2/1/2013




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Seoul: North Korea has dictated Martial Law unto its people as Kim Jung Un has told his people to "prepare for war". The Martial law is possibly a precursor to a Nuclear Test, and Kim Jong Un has said it may take place between Now and Tuesday.
Kim Jung Un had declared an advancement of military and nuclear technologies following the tightened sanctions again North Korea by the United Nations that had occurred after North Korea's missile test in December. It is also in speculation that North Korea is doing so to compete with South Korea's successful first satellite launch, which has been reported to be communicating to South Korean ground control.

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Israeli jets have struck a convoy in Syria that was presumed to be carrying anti-aircraft weaponry to the Hezbollah group in Southern-Syria. Syrian officials "claim" that said attack was on a military research center in Syria, however this has not been able to have been confirmed. Several Syrian rebel factions have claimed they had involvement in attacking the "research center" that had been attacked, claiming it had been manufacturing chemical weaponry. A video had been posted, however it's authenticity has not been able to be confirmed. The United States Official in communication with Israel's military operations has confirmed they had in fact known about the attack, and even went as far to mention that they had warned Syria not to send Hezbollah any kind of weaponry. The Syrian President consistently turns the attention away from these claims and continues to put the blame solely on Israel, even going as far as to say the Rebels contain "Israeli made rations", which have been unable to be confirmed. Allies of Syria are calling out the United States, even going as far as saying the United States has coordinated the attack with Israel.
If tensions continue to rise, an international intervention may be inevitable.

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The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have been victim to hackers from China, an American News Media Outlet reports. The New York Times reports that the hackers use tactics similar to the Chinese Military to target the reporter's email address's. The Wall Street Journal also reports that the computer systems in the organizations offices have been infiltrated to watch over the reports that are directed to China. Chinese spokesman Hong Lei address's the accusations:

"To arbitrarily assert and to conclude without hard evidence that China participated in such hacking attacks is totally irresponsible," said spokesman Hong Lei. "China is also a victim of hacking attacks. Chinese laws clearly forbid hacking attacks, and we hope relevant parties takes a responsible attitude on this issue."

China, infuriated by the accusations, has blocked all access to The New York Times website from within China. A new hacking attempt has also been reported after the initial article reporting this attempt had been posted to spy on the writers and journalists of the initial article, David Barbooza and Jim Yardley. David Barbooza is the chief of Shanghai-based news, where Jim Yardley was his predecessor.



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Sony announced earlier that a PlayStation related event was set for February 20th at 6pm, and appears that there will be a first look at the next generation of the iconic console. Via a tweet Sony says that the PlayStation Meeting 2013 will allow us to "see the future", and attached a video teaser (linked above) that may even have a peek at the specs. The video is mostly abstract renderings of the iconic Playstation button symbols, but there are brief flashes where it looks like something else could be going on. We could have less than three weeks until we see the next Play station, reportedly code named 'Orbis'.







After patenting the rectangle, then trademarking the leaf, Apple has officially gone batshit crazy by trademarking the shop.
The US Patent and Trademark office last week granted Apple's application to trademark a retail store featuring computers. It's the "distinctive design and layout" that Apple now holds the unique design rights to. Thanks to US Trademark 85046990. It was filed in December 2010, and granted on the 22nd of January 2013. The application to exclusively own the particular store arrangement - specifically "rectangular tables arranged in a line". Apple hasn't trademarked having a floor, lights or walls, but details of the storefront, the shelves, the arrangements of the tables and the position of products are now the craptacular iPhone maker's intellectual property. Great. More of the patents details can be found here - USPTO TSDR Case Viewer








Electronic Arts reported a $45 million loss for their lass fiscal quarter. Which I guess isn't too bad when compared to their $205 million loss in 2011's last fiscal quarter. While their losses have gone down, their revenue has not. Revenues for the quarter hit $922 million, compared to little over $1 billion during the same period in the previous year. EA reduced it"s annual earnings guidance, from $3.8 - $4 b to $3.7 - $3.8 b.

"The economy hasn't gotten any stronger", says EA's CFO Blake Jorgensen. "It's a little early for me to know how strong the market's going to be, so based on that we widened our range for revenue for the fourth quarter and brought our guidance down slightly to make sure we're prudent" -- I guess treating your customers with respect never crossed their minds.

But analyst Michael Pachter said EA is being "overly conservative", in the wake of the disappointing sales of 'Metal of Honor: Warfighter', which were bad enough that revealed yesterday that plans for future games in the franchise have been shelved. "They were probably a little -shell-shocked by how bad holiday demand was, and I think at the low end they're probably assuming demand is down 20 percent or so".

BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Williams also noted that some of EA's troubles are beyond it's control (Yeah, right.). As the entire industry is suffering from a downturn in demand as consumers await next-gen hardware from Sony and Microsoft. "The guidance pretty clearly represents a lot of uncertainty in the market and that uncertainty stems from the recent performances as consumers are pretty aware of new consoles coming".

In other words, the news may not be that great but it's not necessarily all that bad. EA also announced that it's digital business is continuing to grow, with game and services for mobile growing 18% year-over-year to roughly $100m, and that it's Origin platform now has more than 39 million registered users and distribution deals with 86 independent developers.








Twitter disclosed on Friday that it's systems had been attacked in the past week by an unidentified group of hackers. As a result of the attack, the hacks may have had access to the usernames, emails and other sensitive information of nearly a quarter million users.

"This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later", the company said in a blog post. "However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information - usernames, emails, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords for approximately 250,000 users"

On Friday evening, Twitter sent out emails to those users who accounts may have been compromised, notifying them that the company had automatically reset their passwords and that they would need to set a new one in order to use twitter again.

The hack comes on heels of a week of major nationally publicized security issues with a number of major publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (which is owned by News Corp., ATD's parent company). In the stories on the hacks, both publications made allegations that the attacks stemmed from their investigative reporting efforts covering Chinese officials, and that the Chinese Government may be involved in some capacity.






When the history books are written on the dawn of the Internet age, Google way well be known as a little search engine that could. Google's shares closed out Friday up 2.63% at $775.60, a record high for the company that also saw it's total market cap balloon to more than $250 billion.





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