Signage for a T-Mobile store is pictured in downtown Los Angeles, California August 31, 2011. REUTERS/Fred??
(Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc agreed to buy wireless spectrum covering the Mississippi Valley region from U.S. Cellular Corp for about $308 million in cash.
The fourth-largest U.S. wireless service provider said the additional spectrum will allow it to expand its 4G LTE network across 29 markets covering 32 million people in several southern states.
(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore; Editing by Anthony Kurian)
DAKAR (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday he would not start "wheeling and dealing" with China and Russia over a U.S. request to extradite former American spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Obama, who appeared concerned that the case would overshadow his three-country tour of Africa begun in Senegal, also dismissed suggestions that the United States might try to intercept Snowden if he were allowed to leave Moscow by air.
"No, I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," he told a news conference in Dakar, a note of disdain in his voice. Snowden turned 30 last week.
Obama said regular legal channels should suffice to handle the U.S. request that Snowden, who left Hong Kong for Moscow, be returned to the United States.
He said he had not yet spoken to China's President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin about the issue.
"I have not called President Xi personally or President Putin personally and the reason is ... number one, I shouldn't have to," Obama said sharply.
"Number two, we've got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues."
Snowden fled the United States to Hong Kong in May, a few weeks before publication in the Guardian and the Washington Post of details he provided about secret U.S. government surveillance of Internet and phone traffic.
The American, who faces espionage charges in the United States and has requested political asylum in Ecuador, has not been seen since his arrival in Moscow on Sunday. Russian officials said he was in a transit area at Sheremetyevo airport.
A Russian immigration source close to the matter said Snowden had not sought a Russian visa and there was no order from the Russian Foreign Ministry or Putin to grant him one.
CHARGES OF U.S. HYPOCRISY
Snowden's case has raised tensions between the United States and both China and Russia. On Thursday, Beijing accused Washington of hypocrisy over cyber security.
Obama's remarks in Senegal seemed calibrated to exert pressure without leading to lasting damage in ties with either country.
"The more the administration can play it down, the more latitude they'll have in the diplomatic arena to work out a deal for him (Snowden)," said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
Obama indicated that damage to U.S. interests was largely limited to revelations from Snowden's initial leak.
"I continue to be concerned about the other documents that he may have," Obama said. "That's part of the reason why we'd like to have Mr. Snowden in custody."
Still, Snowden's disclosures of widespread eavesdropping by the U.S. National Security Agency in China and Hong Kong have given Beijing considerable ammunition in an area that has been a major irritant between the countries.
China's defense ministry called the U.S. government surveillance program, known as Prism, "hypocritical behavior."
"This 'double standard' approach is not conducive to peace and security in cyber space," the state news agency Xinhua reported, quoting ministry spokesman Yang Yujun.
In Washington, the top U.S. military officer dismissed comparisons of Chinese and American snooping in cyber space.
"All nations on the face of the planet always conduct intelligence operations in all domains," Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience at the Brookings Institution.
"China's particular niche in cyber has been theft and intellectual property." Dempsey said. "Their view is that there are no rules of the road in cyber, there's nothing, there's no laws they are breaking, there's no standards of behavior."
In Ecuador, the leftist government of President Rafael Correa said it was waiving preferential rights under a U.S. trade agreement to demonstrate what it saw as its principled stand on Snowden's asylum request.
Correa told reporters Snowden's situation was "complicated" because he has not been able to reach Ecuadorean territory to begin processing the asylum request.
"In order to do so, he must have permission of another country, which has not yet happened," Correa said.
In a deliberately provocative touch, Correa's government also offered a multimillion dollar donation for human rights training in the United States.
The U.S. State Department warned of "grave difficulties" for U.S.-Ecuador relations if the Andean country were to grant Snowden asylum, but gave no specifics.
"USEFUL" CONVERSATIONS
Obama said the United States expected all countries that were considering asylum requests for the former contractor to follow international law.
The White House said last week that Hong Kong's decision to let Snowden leave would hurt U.S.-China relations. Its rhetoric on Russia has been somewhat less harsh.
Putin has rejected U.S. calls to expel Snowden to the United States and said the American should choose his destination and leave the Moscow airport as soon as possible.
Obama acknowledged that the United States did not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but said such a treaty was not necessary to resolve all of the issues involved.
He characterized conversations between Washington and Moscow as "useful."
Washington is focused on how Snowden, a former systems administrator for the contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, gained access to National Security Agency secrets while working at a facility in Hawaii.
NSA Director Keith Alexander on Thursday offered a more detailed breakdown of 54 schemes by militants that he said were disrupted by phone and internet surveillance, even as the Guardian newspaper reported evidence of more extensive spying.
In a speech in Baltimore, Alexander said a list of cases turned over recently to the U.S. Congress included 42 that involved disrupted plots and 12 in which surveillance targets provided material support to terrorism.
The Guardian reported that the NSA for years collected masses of raw data on the email and Internet traffic of U.S. citizens and residents, citing a top-secret draft report on the program prepared by NSA's inspector general.
(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Alexandra Valencia in Quito, Lidia Kelly and Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing, Deborah Charles in Baltimore and Steve Holland, Laura MacInnis and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Jeff Mason and Christopher Wilson; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Tim Dobbyn)
Patong beach in Phuket, Thailand, was destroyed by the tsunami on Dec. 25, 2004. More than 230,000 people died.
Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Patong beach in Phuket, Thailand, was destroyed by the tsunami on Dec. 25, 2004. More than 230,000 people died.
Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
The U.S. is ready for tornadoes, but not tsunamis.
That's the conclusion of a panel of scientists who spoke this week on "mega-disasters" at the American Geophysical Union's science policy meeting in Washington, D.C.
The nation has done a good job preparing for natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, which occur frequently but usually produce limited damage and relatively few casualties, the panelists said. But government officials are just beginning to develop plans for events like a major tsunami or a large asteroid hurtling toward a populated area.
The difference between a disaster and a mega-disaster is scope, the scientists say. For example, Hurricane Sandy was defined as a disaster because it caused significant flooding in New York and New Jersey last year, says Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey. But the flooding was nothing like what happened to California in the winter of 1861 and 1862, she says.
"It rained for 45 days straight," Jones says, creating a lake in the state's central valleys that stretched for 300 miles. The flooding "bankrupted the state, destroyed the ranching industry, drowned 200,000 head of cattle [and] changed California from a ranching economy to a farming economy," she says.
This lithograph from 1862 shows a flooded downtown street in Sacramento, Calif.
Wikimedia Commons
This lithograph from 1862 shows a flooded downtown street in Sacramento, Calif.
Wikimedia Commons
That was a classic mega-disaster, Jones says. So she and others have been studying the event in an effort to make the state better prepared for the next big flood.
One thing they've learned is that the California flood was caused by something known as an atmospheric river, a ribbon of concentrated water vapor that can produce extreme storms. "They have the rain potential of hurricanes ? or even more so because they go on for weeks," she says.
Today, though, meteorologists know how to detect the formation of these atmospheric rivers, Jones says. Also, California now has an extensive system of dams and flood control channels that didn't exist in the 1860s.
So it should be possible to start releasing water before the system gets overwhelmed, Jones says. "There's always something you can do to make it less of a disaster than it might otherwise be if you've got enough information. And that's the point of the science."
Even so, Jones says, studies show a storm slightly smaller than the one in the 1860s would cause flood damage in nearly a quarter of the homes in California.
Another threat from the skies comes in the form of asteroids and comets. And in this case, the damage can be global. It was an asteroid, after all, that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species about 66 million years ago.
An asteroid impact like the one in this illustration may have killed off the dinosaurs.
David A. Hardy/Science Source
That asteroid was probably several miles across, scientists now believe. But an asteroid just half a mile across could still create a dust cloud that would circle the globe, says NASA's Lindley Johnson.
NASA's strategy for big asteroids is to "find them before they find us," Johnson says. And so far, the agency has found more than 10,000 of these "near-Earth objects," he says.
The idea is to identify any large object headed toward Earth, and then deflect it, Johnson says. "Hit it with something really hard and fast, and the change in velocity would change the orbit enough that it would not hit the Earth."
The ocean is another source of mega-disasters. In 2004, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed more than 230,000 people. And in 2011, another tsunami killed more than 15,000 people in Japan and destroyed a nuclear power plant.
? There's always something you can do to make it less of a disaster than it might otherwise be, if you've got enough information. And that's the point of the science.
- Lucy Jones, U.S. Geological Survey
Even Japan, which has been preparing for tsunamis for decades, was overwhelmed by the damage to coastal cities, says Eddie Bernard of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The event "exceeded their capacity to recover because in many cases the city was washed away," he says, adding that tens of thousands of people who lost their homes are still living in government housing.
But the result would have been much worse in the U.S., Bernard says. "Japan was much better prepared, and they are recovering much easier than perhaps we would because they've thought this thing through," he says. For example, roads were restored in weeks, and communities that survived had electricity again within 10 days, he says.
A government study found that if a similar tsunami struck the coast of Oregon, some areas would be without electricity for months and without water for more than a year.
If that happened, Bernard says, residents would abandon their homes and businesses would fail, leaving nothing but a ghost town.
To avoid that scenario, the Oregon Legislature has been holding hearings on how to make communities more resilient in the event of a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.
Radiation from airport scanners -- how much dose we getPublic release date: 27-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jbardi@aip.org 240-535-4954 American Institute of Physics
Examining X-ray backscatter scanners at LAX airport, an independent task force determines that radiation doses are low, according to new report by AAPM
WASHINGTON D.C., June 26, 2013 -- A new report by an independent task force commissioned by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), has found that people absorb less radiation from airport X-ray backscatter scanner than they do while standing in line waiting for the scan itself.
Measurements made on two scanners in active use at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), as well as seven other scanners not in active use at the time of measurement, found that full-body scanners deliver a radiation dose equivalent to what a standard man receives every 1.8 minutes on the ground, or every 12 seconds during an airplane flight.
Put another way, an individual would have to receive more than 22,500 scans in a year to reach the standard maximum safe yearly dose determined by the American National Standards Institute and the Health Physics Society, according to AAPM Report No. 217, "Radiation Dose from Airport Scanners."
"This report represents a wholly independent review of the X-ray scatter airport scanners and is the first we know of to look at multiple scanners including those in actual airport use," said Christopher Cagnon, PhD, DABR, the chief of radiology physics at UCLA Medical Center and one of the lead authors of the new report. "We think the most important single take-away point for concerned passengers is to keep an appropriate perspective: the effective radiation dose received by a passenger during screening is comparable to what that same passenger will receive in 12 seconds during the flight itself or from two minutes of natural radiation exposure."
Sources of Radiation
Natural sources of radiation on the ground include terrestrial sources such as radon in the air, cosmic radiation from space, and even the decay of potassium in the human body. Radiation doses are greater in the air because at cruising altitude, there is less atmosphere to shield passengers and crew from cosmic radiation.
To compare naturally occurring radiation with that emitted by airport scanners, AAPM convened a volunteer task force comprised of medical physicists from the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Davis who donated their time. They measured the radiation delivered by Rapiscan Secure 1000 SP backscatter X-ray scanners, a model once commonly used in American airports but which the Transportation Security Administration has largely pulled from major airports due to passenger concerns over privacy.
The task force found that for a standard man -- approximately 178.6 cm (5'10") tall and 73.2 kg (161.4 pounds) -- one full-body scan delivered approximately 11.1 nanosieverts of radiation. (The "Sievert" is a common unit of radiation dose, and one "nanosievert" is one billionth of a sievert.)
On the ground, the same man receives approximately 3.11 millisieverts of radiation per year -- more than 10,000 times as much. The task force also found that the radiation dose a passenger receives during an average 2.84-hour plane flight -- 9.4 microsieverts -- is nearly 1,000 times greater than the dose delivered by one full-body scan.
"To our knowledge, all prior studies were contracted by the government and looked at a single scanner that was either of an older model or mocked up from component parts," Cagnon said. "A significant difference in our work is we were able to look at multiple working scanners both in the factory and in an international airport."
The AAPM report found that the LAX scanners emitted doses that were even lower than reported in the government contracted studies. The report also examines dose to skin and other superficial organs. To avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, this work was performed by independent physics experts volunteering their expertise, Cagnon added.
###
ABOUT AAPM
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (http://www.aapm.org) is a scientific, educational, and professional organization with nearly 8,000 medical physicists. Headquarters are located at the American Center for Physics in College Park, MD, with a staff of 24, Annual budget is 10.4M. Publications include a scientific journal (Medical Physics), an applied clinical journal (JACMP), technical reports, and symposium proceedings.
MORE INFORMATION
Access the AAPM Report:
http://www.aapm.org/pubs/reports/RPT_217.pdf
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Database (Average TSA Wait Times)
http://apps.cbp.gov/awt/
Environmental Protection Agency Site on Sources of Radiation in the Environment: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/perspective.html
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Radiation from airport scanners -- how much dose we getPublic release date: 27-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jbardi@aip.org 240-535-4954 American Institute of Physics
Examining X-ray backscatter scanners at LAX airport, an independent task force determines that radiation doses are low, according to new report by AAPM
WASHINGTON D.C., June 26, 2013 -- A new report by an independent task force commissioned by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), has found that people absorb less radiation from airport X-ray backscatter scanner than they do while standing in line waiting for the scan itself.
Measurements made on two scanners in active use at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), as well as seven other scanners not in active use at the time of measurement, found that full-body scanners deliver a radiation dose equivalent to what a standard man receives every 1.8 minutes on the ground, or every 12 seconds during an airplane flight.
Put another way, an individual would have to receive more than 22,500 scans in a year to reach the standard maximum safe yearly dose determined by the American National Standards Institute and the Health Physics Society, according to AAPM Report No. 217, "Radiation Dose from Airport Scanners."
"This report represents a wholly independent review of the X-ray scatter airport scanners and is the first we know of to look at multiple scanners including those in actual airport use," said Christopher Cagnon, PhD, DABR, the chief of radiology physics at UCLA Medical Center and one of the lead authors of the new report. "We think the most important single take-away point for concerned passengers is to keep an appropriate perspective: the effective radiation dose received by a passenger during screening is comparable to what that same passenger will receive in 12 seconds during the flight itself or from two minutes of natural radiation exposure."
Sources of Radiation
Natural sources of radiation on the ground include terrestrial sources such as radon in the air, cosmic radiation from space, and even the decay of potassium in the human body. Radiation doses are greater in the air because at cruising altitude, there is less atmosphere to shield passengers and crew from cosmic radiation.
To compare naturally occurring radiation with that emitted by airport scanners, AAPM convened a volunteer task force comprised of medical physicists from the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Davis who donated their time. They measured the radiation delivered by Rapiscan Secure 1000 SP backscatter X-ray scanners, a model once commonly used in American airports but which the Transportation Security Administration has largely pulled from major airports due to passenger concerns over privacy.
The task force found that for a standard man -- approximately 178.6 cm (5'10") tall and 73.2 kg (161.4 pounds) -- one full-body scan delivered approximately 11.1 nanosieverts of radiation. (The "Sievert" is a common unit of radiation dose, and one "nanosievert" is one billionth of a sievert.)
On the ground, the same man receives approximately 3.11 millisieverts of radiation per year -- more than 10,000 times as much. The task force also found that the radiation dose a passenger receives during an average 2.84-hour plane flight -- 9.4 microsieverts -- is nearly 1,000 times greater than the dose delivered by one full-body scan.
"To our knowledge, all prior studies were contracted by the government and looked at a single scanner that was either of an older model or mocked up from component parts," Cagnon said. "A significant difference in our work is we were able to look at multiple working scanners both in the factory and in an international airport."
The AAPM report found that the LAX scanners emitted doses that were even lower than reported in the government contracted studies. The report also examines dose to skin and other superficial organs. To avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, this work was performed by independent physics experts volunteering their expertise, Cagnon added.
###
ABOUT AAPM
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (http://www.aapm.org) is a scientific, educational, and professional organization with nearly 8,000 medical physicists. Headquarters are located at the American Center for Physics in College Park, MD, with a staff of 24, Annual budget is 10.4M. Publications include a scientific journal (Medical Physics), an applied clinical journal (JACMP), technical reports, and symposium proceedings.
MORE INFORMATION
Access the AAPM Report:
http://www.aapm.org/pubs/reports/RPT_217.pdf
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Database (Average TSA Wait Times)
http://apps.cbp.gov/awt/
Environmental Protection Agency Site on Sources of Radiation in the Environment: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/perspective.html
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama cut off long-time U.S. trade benefits for Bangladesh on Thursday in a mostly symbolic response to conditions in the country's garment industry that have cost more than 1,200 lives in the past year.
The U.S. move does not directly affect Bangladesh's multi-billion-dollar clothing exports, since garments are not eligible for U.S. duty cuts. But it could prompt the European Union into similar action, which would have a bigger impact as Bangladesh's clothing and textiles exports to the EU are duty-free.
"I have determined that it is appropriate to suspend Bangladesh ... because it is not taking steps to afford internationally recognized worker rights to workers in the country," Obama said in a statement.
The government in Bangladesh said it did not expect the move to have an immediate impact on business but feared it would hurt U.S. investment in the country over time.
"We are desperately trying to upgrade the situation of our garment factories and we expect assistance, not punitive action," said H.T.Imam, government adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The factories came under scrutiny after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in April that killed 1,132 people and the Tazreen factory fire in November that killed 112.
"This was not a decision taken lightly," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters. "Our goal, of course, is not only to see Bangladesh restore its eligibility for (the trade) benefits, but to see Bangladeshi workers in safe, appropriate work situations."
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said the decision sent an important message to countries that receive duty-free access to the U.S. market under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program.
"Countries that tolerate dangerous - and even deadly - working conditions and deny basic workers' rights, especially the right to freedom of association, will risk losing preferential access to the U.S. market," Trumka said.
It also puts American companies on notice they must take meaningful steps to improve conditions for Bangladesh's factory workers, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said in a statement.
"No one will want to wear clothing that is ?Made in Bangladesh' if it is made on the blood of workers. It's time for American industry to show leadership and work with their European counterparts on a global standard for safety."
U.S. HEAVILY TAXES CLOTHING FROM BANGLADESH
Suspending Bangladesh from the GSP program will increase U.S. duties on an array of products the country exports to the United States, such as tobacco, sporting equipment, porcelain china, plastic products and a small amount of textile products.
"I wonder why the U.S. government does not ask U.S. buyers to offer us a better price instead of deciding to squeeze us further," said K.M.Iqbal Hossain, general secretary of the Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
"This will only make things worse for workers even in other sectors." Hossain said taxes for the plastics industry would rise by 10 percent. Bangladesh exports plastic accessories such as garment clips and hangers among others.
The GSP program was created in 1976 to help economic development in the world's poorest countries and to reduce import costs for U.S. companies.
In 2012, Bangladesh was spared about $2 million in U.S. duties on about $35 million worth of goods under the GSP program, but it paid about $732 million in U.S. duties on $4.9 billion of clothing exports not covered by the program, said Ed Gresser, a trade analyst with the GlobalWorks Foundation.
An EU decision to suspend trade benefits would have far more impact. EU officials raised the possibility of suspension in early May in the hope of prodding Bangladesh into action.
The EU imported roughly 9.2 billion euros ($12.13 billion) of goods from Bangladesh last year, according to data from the EU's executive branch, the European Commission.
Clothing and textile products ranging from towels and bedding accounted for almost 93 percent of those goods.
EU and Bangladeshi officials will meet in Geneva in July for talks aimed at improving safety conditions in Bangladesh and preserving the country's trade benefits.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association President Mohammad Atiqul Islam said it was struggling to improve working conditions in the country and hoped for a better judgment from the European Union.
PETITION FILED IN 2007
The United States' own review dates back to 2007, when the AFL-CIO, the main U.S. labor group, first filed a petition asking that Bangladesh's trade benefits be revoked.
Despite the relatively small volume of trade affected by the U.S. decision, Froman said Bangladeshi officials put great value on remaining in the program.
"We will be staying very much in direct and continuous contact with the government of Bangladesh as they take additional actions on workers rights and workers safety," Froman said. "We'll review their status at the appropriate time."
European retailers have responded to the two tragedies by signing an agreement to promote worker safety in Bangladesh, but many U.S. retailers have balked at accord, saying it gives unions too much control over ensuring workplace safety.
They have been working instead with former Maine U.S. senators George Mitchell, a Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Republican, on an alternative plan to improve fire and safety regulations.
The effort is being coordinated by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
"At this point only a few final details remain to be worked out and agreed upon," BPC President Jason Grummet said earlier this week in an email. "We remain on track to complete the process by early July."
(Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir and Nandita Bose in Dhaka; Editing by Vicki Allen, Mary Milliken and Nick Macfie; doug.palmer@thomsonreuters.com; 202 898 8341; Reuters Messaging: doug.palmer.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)
Expanded deal brings Downton Abbey and loads of PBS KIDS programming to Prime members
Amazon has extended a deal with PBS to offer hundreds more episodes from past seasons of several TV series on the network. The deal will make more episodes from popular programs such as NOVA, Masterpiece and Ken Burns documentaries available for free to Amazon Prime members. The deal also adds more PBS KIDS programming with Caillou, Arthur, Daniels Tiger’s Neighborhood, Dinosaur Train and Wild Kratts -- all available for unlimited watching with FreeTime Unlimited on Kindle devices.
The new extended deal also makes Amazon the exclusive video subscription distributor of the third season of Downton Abbey, building on its previous announcement that it will be the exclusive subscription home to all seasons of the program later this year. Amazon says that Prime Instant Video now offers over 41,000 movies and TV episodes for Amazon Prime members to enjoy.
Dungeon crawling has left an indelible mark on gaming, and the Android game QuestLord ($1.99) recreates just about every aspect of those computer games of yore. But its retro appearance and home on a mobile device doesn't make this a casual game by any means.
The Quest Begins You begin QuestLord by choosing to play as a dwarf, human, or elf character. Each has a different starting location, stats, and equipment, along with different stories about his or her home and people. I really appreciated the developer's effort to create a deep and expansive world through backstory.
The game world is divided into maze-like maps, each lovingly crafted in a low-res pixel style. The setting is lush, in its own angular way (see the slideshow for examples). The walls of the mazes you navigate range from towering trees to dank dungeons to a fearful human settlement at dusk. The look hits all of my classic high-fantasy buttons.
But don't mistake QuestLord for a merely retro-looking game, like Nimble Quest. Here, you progress through the world one step at a time using directional buttons at the bottom of the screen. While I appreciate this nostalgic arrangement, it's frustrating to use, and I spent most of my time toggling between the main screen and the map. That said, I was pleasantly surprised at how the game was eminently compatible with one-handed play: the true test of a mobile game.
Developer Eric Kinkead thoughtfully introduces some touch controls for your inventory, your spell book, and especially for combat. Simply swipe across the screen for a melee attack with your equipped weapon. If you've equipped ?a spellbook or shield, you can use them in combat by tapping the button to the left of the health and magic bars. Magic is powerful but limited, since you can only prepare one spell at a time.
Enemies move freely throughout the maze, so you can avoid them some of the time. Picking your battles can be critical, especially when health-restoring food items are running low. It also means that enemies can sneak up on you when your back is turned, as when fighting other foes. The game helpfully indicates the direction of an attack by flashing red on the appropriate direction button, or blue if you've evaded an attack.
In addition to the old-style controls, the game's story and atmosphere are distinctively '80s high-fantasy. QuestLord doesn't take itself too seriously, and you'll encounter books and characters that add some much-needed humor. In the middle of it all is your character, striving to fulfill your destiny and become the QuestLord who can heal this shattered world.
My Quest Has Ended Despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to get into QuestLord and as such have not complete the game. I tried playing Quick Mode, which is essentially an endless dungeon crawl with a pre-made character, but while I enjoyed it, I never found myself wanting to play. The navigation was frustrating and tedious, and I never got into a rhythm that made time slip by. The story and the styling were fun, but not enough to really draw me in.
Because Kinkead clearly had a very specific vision for what this game should be, it's hard to point to changes that would improve my experience. Change too much, and QuestLord just wouldn't be QuestLord. Though, if the main game screen indicated the compass direction I was facing, I could spend more time playing the game and less time checking the map.
Truth be told, that's probably part of the charm of QuestLord. It's designed to let players relive a different kind of game, warts and all.
Your Quest Begins The trouble with QuestLord is that it's almost entirely form over function. How we play games and how we expect games to unfold has changed a lot in the last three decades, and QuestLord struggles to bridge that gap. Yes, the look and style of the game are a delightful throwback, but many players will be turned off by the awkward navigation and tedious pace.
If you have fond memories of rogue-like dungeon crawls and first-edition D&D, then you will love QuestLord. If you find the graphics appealing but want something lighter and modern, consider Nimble Quest. This game is a love letter to a time and place, but it might not be addressed to you.
Posted on: 12:54 pm, June 19, 2013, by KFOR-TV and A. Edwards, updated on: 06:15pm, June 19, 2013
A month after those monster tornadoes ripped through our state several hundred pets still remain unclaimed in local shelters. Time is running out for you to find your displaced pet.
Linda Cavanaugh interviewed Gayla Sesher from the City of Moore and Justin Scally from the American Humane Association. A pet adoption event has been set up.
The event will be held at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds this Saturday, June 22nd. It will be at 615 East Robinson in Norman.
Pet owners have until the end of Wednesday?to claim lost animals after last month?s storms; they will soon be up for adoption.
Officials said hundreds of pets are still waiting to be claimed at locations across the metro.
Where to claim lost pets:
- The Animal Resource Center - The Central Oklahoma Humane Society - The Cleveland County Fairgrounds
If they pets aren?t claimed, they will be up for adoption at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds Saturday.
Last week we brought you inside the Common Press, a letterpress studio where printing methods of yore are reinvigorated in the name of art. As much as the Press is engaged in making new things, the technological history being preserved there is vast.
The machines preserved there span more than 150 years of printing history, ranging from a 3,000 pound mammoth to a Civil War-era letterpress. It's as much a museum as it is an art studio. Check out five printers from their collection below.
i had gotten my iphone 4s about a month ago and a friend of mine unlocked it for me.i have been trying to do a sim swap with my iphone 4s but its not letting me go into cellular data for some reason. i take my straight talk sim card out and put in the t-mobile one(unactivated). i go to settings, general, and cellular and than i take the t-mobile sim card put in the straight talk sim card but it doesnt stay on that page. it goes right back to the general page. i restored my phone twice now and i still cant get it to work. please someone help me out.
FILE - This undated file photo shows country singer Slim Whitman. Whitman died Wednesday, June 12, 2013 of heart failure in Florida. He was 90. Whitman's career began in the late 1940s, and his tenor falsetto and ebony mustache and sideburns became global trademarks. They were also an inspiration for countless jokes thanks to the ubiquitous 1980s and 1990s TV commercials that pitched his records. (AP Photo, file)
FILE - This undated file photo shows country singer Slim Whitman. Whitman died Wednesday, June 12, 2013 of heart failure in Florida. He was 90. Whitman's career began in the late 1940s, and his tenor falsetto and ebony mustache and sideburns became global trademarks. They were also an inspiration for countless jokes thanks to the ubiquitous 1980s and 1990s TV commercials that pitched his records. (AP Photo, file)
FILE - This 1980 file photo originally provided by Epic Records shows country singer Slim Whitman. Whitman died Wednesday, June 19, 2013 of heart failure in Florida. He was 90. Whitman's career began in the late 1940s, and his tenor falsetto and ebony mustache and sideburns became global trademarks. They were also an inspiration for countless jokes thanks to the ubiquitous 1980s and 1990s TV commercials that pitched his records. (AP Photo/Epic Records, file)
MIAMI (AP) ? Country singer Slim Whitman, the high-pitched yodeler who sold millions of records through ever-present TV ads in the 1980s and 1990s and whose song saved the world in the film comedy "Mars Attacks!," died Wednesday at a Florida hospital. He was 90.
Whitman died of heart failure at Orange Park Medical Center, his son-in-law Roy Beagle said.
Whitman's tenor falsetto and ebony mustache and sideburns became global trademarks ? and an inspiration for countless jokes ? thanks to the TV commercials that pitched his records.
But he was a serious musical influence on early rock, and in the British Isles, he was known as a pioneer of country music for popularizing the style there. Whitman also encouraged a teen Elvis Presley when he was the headliner on the bill and the young singer was making his professional debut.
Whitman recorded more than 65 albums and sold millions of records, including 4 million of "All My Best" that was marketed on TV.
His career spanned six decades, beginning in the late 1940s, but he achieved cult figure status in the 1980s. His visage as an ordinary guy singing romantic ballads struck a responsive chord with the public.
"All of a sudden, here comes a guy in a black and white suit, with a mustache and a receding hairline, playing a guitar and singing 'Rose Marie,'" Whitman told The Associated Press in 1991. "They hadn't seen that."
For most of the 1980s, he was consistent fodder for Johnny Carson's monologues on late night NBC-TV, and the butt of Slim Whitman look-alike contests.
"That TV ad is the reason I'm still here," he said. "It buys fuel for the boat."
"I almost didn't do them. I had seen those kinds of commercials and didn't like them. But it was one of the smartest things I ever did."
He yodeled throughout his career and had a three-octave singing range. Whitman said yodeling required rehearsal.
"It's like a prize fighter. He knows he has a fight coming up, so he gets in the gym and trains. So when I have a show coming up, I practice yodeling."
Born Ottis Dewey Whitman Jr. in Tampa on Jan. 23, 1923, he worked as a young man in a meatpacking plant, at a shipyard and as a postman.
He was able to get on radio in Tampa and signed with RCA Records in 1949 with the help of Col. Tom Parker, who later became Presley's longtime manager. RCA gave Whitman the show business name Slim ? he was a slender 6-foot-1 ? to replace his uninspiring birth name.
In 1952, Whitman had his first hit record, "Love Song of the Waterfall," which 25 years later became part of the soundtrack of the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Another Whitman hit from that year, "Indian Love Call," was used to humorous effect in the 1996 "Mars Attacks!" ? his yodel causes the Martians' heads to explode.
He crossed paths with Presley in July 1954 when he starred at a concert in a Memphis park just as Presley ? mistakenly billed as "Ellis Presley" in one ad for the show ? was launching his career.
According to Peter Guralnick's book "Last Train to Memphis," Presley's brief, energetic turn on stage caused a wild reaction from the crowd. When Whitman came on for his performance, he told the audience: "You know, I can understand your reaction, 'cause I was standing backstage and I was enjoying it just as much as you."
With Whitman's early hits, he became a star on the "Louisiana Hayride" radio show.
His version of "Rose Marie," the title song from the venerable operetta that spawned "Indian Love Call," became a huge hit in England in 1955, staying at No. 1 on the charts for 11 weeks.
Whitman's other hits included "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You," ''Red River Valley," ''Danny Boy" and "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen."
"The material I did was lasting material," Whitman said in 1991. "A lot of people thought I wasn't doing anything, but I was in the studio. The biggest factor is the material you choose. You hunt, you cut."
He was survived by his daughter, Sharon Beagle, and his son, Byron Whitman.
Whitman told the AP in 1991 that he wanted to be remembered as "a nice guy."
"I don't think you've ever heard anything bad about me, and I'd like to keep it that way. I'd like my son (Bryon) to remember me as a good dad. I'd like the people to remember me as having a good voice and a clean suit."
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee says it appears the much-criticized national electronic surveillance program foiled "dozens" of terrorist plots.
Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who will preside over an open hearing of the intelligence panel later Tuesday, says he expects the head of NASA, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, to declassify additional information about the program. The Obama administration already has declassified data crediting the NSA program with breaking up a planned attack on New York City's subway system.
Rogers tells NBC's "Today" show that lawmakers "know there are dozens" of terrorist plots thwarted by the NSA program. And he says Congress also wants to learn much more about how NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, who publicly revealed information about the program, got access to such highly sensitive data.
STOCKHOLM (AP) ? Swedish fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz AB on Wednesday said profits fell by 11 percent in the second quarter due to the strong Swedish krona and increased markdowns as it tried to shift its products.
The company said its net profit for the March-May period dropped to 4.66 billion kronor ($720 million) from 5.22 billion a year earlier. Sales for the quarter slipped marginally to 31.64 billion kronor from 31.66 billion.
H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson said the krona's strength weighed on the result, while sales in local currencies increased by 5 percent.
He said sales remained strong in Asia but that the overall revenue suffered due to the "continued challenging situation for the fashion retail industry" and bad weather in many of the company's big markets.
Persson added that H&M opened nearly 100 new stores in the second quarter, including its first in South America in Santiago de Chile, and continues to make long-term investments in its online sales.
"Although most of these long-term investments have not yet generated revenues, we see them as wise and necessary - all in order to build an even stronger H&M," Persson said. "There is great potential in the growing online market. We are looking forward to launching our online sales in the US in August."
H&M's share price was up some 1.2 percent at 227.5 kronor in early trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
Founded in 1947, H&M has more than 2,900 stores in some 48 countries. In addition to H&M, the group includes the brands COS, Monki, Weekday and Cheap Monday, & Other Stories as well as H&M Home. It employs more than 100,000 people worldwide.
Since launching in 2011 Lytro, a miniaturized light field camera, has steadily rolled out a number of updates and new colors. After all, not everything needs to be updated with a new model every year! And today the company is unlocking a new feature that's been hidden since day one: Wi-Fi. Oh, and they're releasing an app, too.
Remember when Lytro first launched and it only worked with Macs? Well, the added Wi-Fi functionality isn't going to do you much good unless you have an iOS device. By using your iPhone's data connection, you can upload full-res "living" photos to Lytro.com or share them for the world to see as a GIF (refocus or perspective shift). You can opt for just Facebook or Twitter and the like. The app itself will only show images that you can refocus by tapping here or there and not the full-fledged perspective shift version. When you're at home and your iOS device is already connected to a Wi-Fi network, the app will prompt you to switch over to the Lytro to upload images on the fly.
Lytro says they want to make an Android app but that a survey of existing customers and potential customers revealed that "the vast majority" have iPhones, so Android owners are SOL for now. The app itself and update for the camera are available today for free.
Some people just collect Rolling Stones records. And then there are some who want a more personal remembrance. For those, Bonham's Auction House in London is putting on the block a unique item direct from the head of singer Mick Jagger: A lock of his hair.
And if you've got somewhere between $2,300-$3,100, it could be yours (that's the estimate range according to Bonham's website, though of course it could go much higher when it goes on the block on July 3). But what's almost more fun than the idea of having a piece of hair from one of rock's icons is the story behind it.
The lock comes with a statement from Chrissie Shrimpton, younger sister of model Jean Shrimpton (who dated Jagger in the early 1960s). When Jagger visited Shrimpton's parents' farm, her grandmother saved the lock -- it's not clear how she got it in the first place -- and after grandma died, it "passed to Chrissie's aunt and when she died, the hair was returned to Chrissie by a cousin taking care of personal effects," says the listing.
So it's a family -- wait for it -- "hair-loom," then.
The lock -- which was snipped "unbeknown to her at the time," according to Bonham's, comes in a paper envelope on which was written, "Mick Jagger's hair after being washed + trimmed by Chris at Rose Hill Farm."
Celebrity cast-offs are apparently all the rage these days; New York magazine's Vulture column (among others) reports that Keith Richards' hair recently sold at auction for $1,400 while Lady Gaga's fake fingernail fetched $12,000 when it went on the block.
Proceeds from the sale of Jagger's hair are set to go to the charity Changing Faces. The auction will end just a few hours after the hair goes on sale, so be prepared for a quick window of opportunity.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Four more people have died and three more have fallen ill in Saudi Arabia from the new SARS-like coronavirus MERS-CoV, the Saudi Health Ministry said on Monday.
The ministry said the four deaths were among previously registered cases. The new infections were in Eastern Province, in the capital Riyadh and in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.
Saudi Arabia has been the country most affected by the respiratory-system virus, with 49 confirmed cases, of whom 32 have died, according to data from the ministry.
In a statement confirming the four additional deaths and three additional cases in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the worldwide toll now stood at 38 deaths from a total of 64 laboratory-confirmed cases.
The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, has spread from the Gulf to France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and Britain. The WHO has called it the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV).
It is a relative of the virus that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in China in 2002 and killed about a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
The origin of the MERS virus is still unclear. So far, it appears to spread between people only when there is close, prolonged contact.
The WHO is advising healthcare providers around the world to be vigilant, especially with recent travellers returning from the Middle East who develop respiratory infections.
(Reporting by Mahmoud Habboush and by Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Angus McDowall and Robin Pomeroy)
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) ? Kobe Bryant reached a settlement with a New Jersey auction house that allows his mother sell a small amount of his memorabilia, while also getting an apology from his parents, who thanked him for his financial support.
Kenneth Goldin, founder of southern New Jersey-based Goldin Auctions, said Monday that his company and the Los Angeles Lakers star had reached a settlement. Through a publicist, an attorney for Bryant also confirmed the dispute had been resolved.
Citing a confidentiality agreement, Goldin wouldn't discuss details of the settlement beyond identifying the six items to be auctioned, including two uniforms worn by Bryant at Lower Merion High School outside Philadelphia and two 2000 NBA championship rings Bryant gave to his parents.
Goldin Auctions sued in federal court last month after Bryant's lawyers wrote the company telling it to cancel a planned auction of close to 100 items. The Los Angeles Lakers star claimed his mother, Pamela, didn't have the right to sell the items. Bryant also filed suit against the auction company in California. A trial had been scheduled to begin next week.
Under the settlement, Goldin also will sell Bryant's 2000 NBA All-Star game ring and his medallion and ribbon from Magic's Roundball Classic, a high school all-star game.
In an emailed statement, Bryant's parents wrote: "We regret our actions and statements related to the Kobe Bryant auction memorabilia. We apologize for any misunderstanding and unintended pain we may have caused our son and appreciate the financial support that he has provided to us over the years. We also would like to apologize to Goldin Auctions for their inadvertent involvement in this matter and thank them for their assistance."
Goldin said auction prices can be difficult to predict but that he thinks the high school uniforms and the All-Star Game ring will fetch the highest prices. He expects the items to go for $100,000 to $250,000 each. The auction is scheduled to run from June 17 to July 19.
"We are very happy it settled and we are happy with the items," Goldin said. "If I'd looked at the list from the beginning and picked nine items I wanted to get my hands on, I've got five of them."
Bryant jumped from high school straight to the NBA in 1996 and has won five championships with the Lakers, most recently in 2010. His father, Joe, played eight seasons in the NBA with Philadelphia, San Diego and Houston.
Today companies like Microsoft and Sony aren't just trying to sell you the video game console of the future, they're trying to sell you the living room of the future, a central hub that connects you to your family and your family to the world. But our expectations for what tech should be included in the living room of tomorrow have evolved dramatically over the past century.
From newspapers delivered by radio in the 1930s to the internet-connected TVs of the 1990s, today we have a brief history of the living room of the future.
Home Movies, TV, and Newspaper by Radio
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) showed off its "Living Room of Tomorrow." Television was still very much an experimental technology, but it was an enormous hit at the Fair, where Depression-weary visitors couldn't get enough tech-utopianism. RCA's display put TV front and center in their living room of tomorrow?even if the screen was absolutely tiny.
It wasn't just TV that RCA was promising. This sleek, streamlined, ultra-modern living room of tomorrow had a movie projector, radio, record player, sound recorder, and even a fax machine that would deliver your daily newspaper by radio. RCA was experimenting with these bizarre faxpaper machines in the 1930s, gaining license from the FCC to utilize radio spectrum that went unused between midnight and 6am.
The August 1939 issue of Popular Mechanicshighlighted RCA's living room set-up at the Fair:
Simple in arrangement, and soft in color because of television, the suggested ?radio living room of tomorrow? at the New York World?s Fair is open to visitors, who are permitted to inspect the various sight, sound and facsimile facilities while they are in operation.
Television and proto-faxes are one thing, but it wasn't until after World War II that the living room would truly become the high-tech nerve center of the American middle class home. The postwar economic recovery and rise of leisure time meant that people looking into the future saw living rooms with increasingly sleeker TVs, video on demand, and a generally more diverse mix of media.
It's no surprise that TV has long had a central spot in the living room of the future. By 1956 about 75 percent of American homes had a television. And it was fast becoming a great American family-friendly past-time.
Home Media Library
The February 1, 1959 edition of the Sunday comic strip Closer Than We Think by commercial illustrator Arthur Radebaugh imagined the "Electronic Home Library" of the near future.
From the Chicago Tribune:
Some unusual inventions for home entertainment and education will be yours in the future, such as the "television recorder" that RCA's David Sarnoff described recently.
With this device, when a worthwhile program comes over the air while you are away from home, or even while you're watching it, you'll be able to preserve both the picture and sound on tape for replaying at any time. Westinghouse's Gwilym Price expects such tapes to reproduce shows in three dimensions and color on screens as shallow as a picture.
Another pushbutton development will be projection of microfilm books on the ceiling or wall in large type. To increase their impact on students, an electronic voice may accompany the visual passages.
While I imagine that you might get a sore neck from staring at the ceiling all day, that electronic voice accompaniment would certainly alleviate the problem. This was also one of the earliest conceptions of the DVR as we know it today; if only Radebaugh had foreseen the advent of those annoying Hopper commercials, we might have headed them off at the pass.
Flatscreen and Worldwide
What happens when beaming entertainment and news all around the world becomes a reality? The 1966 book Magna Carta of Space explored what international agreements may need to be hammered out now that countries were putting humans, satellites (and potentially weapons) into space.
Their living room of the future included a flat-screen TV almost as large as yours today, but what are people watching on it? The shot of the Eiffel Tower was perhaps a wink at mid-'60s readers that the French?and their comparatively loose attitudes toward sexual imagery?might infect the American living room of tomorrow. Little did they know that the US would forgo sex for ultraviolence as its primary illicit indulgence.
The Ultimate Remote
In 1967, Walter Cronkite gave Americans a look at what was billed as the futuristic home of the year 2001. His CBS show "The 21st Century" showed Americans in the 1960s what the kitchen, office and, of course, living room of the future might look like. Designed by Philco-Ford, the house was also featured in a company-produced short film called "1999 A.D."
The living room of the future included a giant control panel from which to adjust everything from the TV to the glowing, color-changing walls.
A lot of this new free time will be spent at home. And this console controls a full array of equipment to inform, instruct and entertain the family of the future. The possibilities for the evening?s program are called up on this screen. We could watch a football game, or a movie shown in full color on our big 3D television screen. The sound would come from these globe-like speakers. Or with the push of a button we could momentarily escape from our 21st century lives and fill the room with stereophonic music from another age.
It's never said explicitly in the episode, but those light-up walls weren't just for giggles. Glowing walls actually had some utility during the Cold War, providing illumination in those windowless, concrete-reinforced rooms built as fallout shelters. The atomic concept houses of the late 1940s and '50s would often show backlit aquariums, well-lit dioramas, and colorful walls in a conscious effort to distract from the fact that they were windowless rooms.
The June 1967 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine gave readers their own take on that Philco-Ford house of the future.
Their version of the house added a holographic dimension to the TV. From the magazine:
The living room, with its wallsized television screen, is the focal point of this house.
The TV screen is three-dimensional or holographic, enabling you to look around corners almost as though you were inside the scene being projected. We expect that electroluminescence is going to be the medium for displays of this type.
Death of Film, Rise of Robots
The flatscreen high-def TV continued to be the centerpiece of the living room of the future in the 1970s. But as you can see in the illustration above from the 1979 children's book Future Cities by Kenneth Gatland and David Jefferis, the personal robot makes lounging in your living room that much easier.
The book lays out all of the improvements that are just around the corner for kids of the 1970s:
1. Giant-size TV. Based on the designs already available, this one has a super-bright screen for daylight viewing and stereo sound system.
2. Electronic video movie camera, requires no film, just a spool of tape. Within ten years video cameras like this could be replaced by 3-D holographic recorders.
3. Flat screen TV. No longer a bulky box, TV has shrunk to a thickness of less than five centimetres. This one is used to order shopping via a computerised shopping centre a few kilometres away. The system takes orders and indicates if any items are not in stock.
4. Video disc player used for recording off the TV and for replaying favourite films.
5. Domestic robot rolls in with drinks. One robot, the Quasar, is already on sale in the USA. Reports indicate that it may be little more than a toy however, so it will be a few years before 'Star Wars' robots tramp through our homes.
6. Mail slot. By 1990, most mail will be sent in electronic form. Posting a letter will consist of placing it in front of a copier in your home or at the post office. The electronic read-out will be flashed up to a satellite, to be beamed to its destination. Like many other electronic ideas, the savings in time and energy could be enormous.
Big TVs? Email? Blu-ray? Video cameras? Check, check, check, check. How is it that robot butler is the only one we're still missing out on?
Interactive Holographic Classics
By the 1980s the living room of the future was quite the interactive experience. Not only could you watch holographic movies, you could become a part of the action.
The 1981 kids' book Tomorrow's Home by Neil Ardley promised kids just that with a two-page spread that showed how people of the future might entertain themselves by stepping into their media:
All this could come about with developments in holographic video ? a system that uses laser beams to produce images that have depth just as in real life. Once perfected, it will produce a show that takes place not on a screen but in real space ? even around you. You could walk in and out of the action, and view it from any direction ? the ultimate in realism. In this case, the computer that operates the system has been instructed to omit the role of Julius Caesar so as to allow you to take part. Although the images look so real, you could walk through them, so you suffer no harm from your killers' knives.
The Sensorium
For some people, however, holographic media wasn't enough. Plugging the human body directly into the living room would prove to be the wave of the future.
The February 1982 issue of The Futurist magazine ran illustrations by Roy Mason which imagined the house of tomorrow. The "sensorium" was supposedly going to replace the family room at some far off date in the future.
The magazine explained that the circular design wasn't just for taking advantage of viewing the hologram, it also facilitated conversation. You also had the option to hook yourself up to the living room's biofeedback sensors, allowing the whole place to become one big creepy mood ring.
Home entertainment center or "sensorium" features a free-standing "holostage" that generated three-dimensional TV images from broadcast, cable, or recordings. The walls are large-screen video displays that can change color in time to music, or, linked through biofeedback sensors, respond to people's moods. Comfortable circular couch also encourages a more traditional form of entertainment ? conversation.
The sensorium isn't quite eXistenZ-level of plugging in, but I suppose that's a good thing.
Microsoft's Web TV
In 1995 Microsoft produced a series of "life in the future" videos that were included on a CD-ROM with the book The Road Ahead by Bill Gates.
Their living room of the year 2004 looks pretty ordinary, but the TV of the future is revolutionary because it can talk to the internet, much like the ubiquitous "smart" TVs of today do. The whole experience actually feels a bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure in the creepy way that the media personalities lay out your choices for entertainment.
The living room of the future has always been about connections; making them deeper, stronger, and more expansive. And while you can see everyone from Microsoft to Sony to Apple carrying that torch today, it's still not clear that access to more stuff has brought us closer together. If anything, in the living room of the future, we're further apart than ever.
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Public release date: 27-Jun-2013
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