Continue reading April Fools' Day roundup: the big toys, the small toys and the cats
April Fools' Day roundup: the big toys, the small toys and the cats originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comics have been around for centuries, but the iconic Action Comics #1 featuring Superman in 1938 is widely considered to be the beginning of the ?Golden Age.? Other metalliferous ages followed: silver, bronze, iron. Now, comics are in the ?Modern Age.? And the biggest question both today and going forward?will comic books largely remain on glossy paper or transition to backlit LED?
Better than the soap opera with zombies on AMC, The Walking Dead as seen on Comics by ComiXology
Perhaps this question became more difficult in 2007, when comiXology launched as an online community for readers. In five years it has grown into the niche equivalent of iTunes. With more than 20,000 titles by dozens of publishers including Marvel and DC, Comics by comiXology has become the dominant platform for finding, buying, and reading comics on Web, tablet, or smartphone. The underlying technology is licensed, too. Branded apps from Marvel, DC, BOOM! Studios, IDW, and others use it and are linked. If you are reading comics on a tablet, you might as well be reading Comics.
Comics by ComiXology store
Similar to iBooks, Comics (free) functions as store and reader. The Store is easy to navigate and search, much faster than rifling through bagged copies in storage boxes. Select a specific comic and the display shows a coverflow of the series, price, credits, summaries, and a few preview pages. There's even a link to buy in print directing users to local stores. Prices are comparable to print, usually from $0.99 to $2.99 for single issues. Comics also provides a decent ?taste? of 500 free titles and counting. An increasing number of titles are also available the same day as print, eliminating another advantage of paper. Whatever benefits the physical medium holds, the new iPad threatens to take those away.
Saving shelf space is the obvious advantage of digital comics. A single issue takes up anywhere from 10 to 20MB. In terms of physical size, an iPad single page is slightly smaller diagonally than paper,?9.7 versus about 12 inches. It?s hard to imagine using a smaller tablet to read comics, or one of those Macrocephaly smartphones. Virtually all smartphones would be eliminated too were it not for Guided View.
This trademarked and controversial technology presents individual panels in sequence. It zooms in on each panel, or even multiple parts of a panel, optionally showing the entire page upon entering and exiting. While the benefit is obvious on the small screen of a smartphone, the risk is the destruction of the page as art. Does anyone think Michelangelo frescoing the Creation of Adam expected it to be experienced like this?
Guided View is, in my opinion, just awful. Favoring the parts over the sum of the page, it transforms the experience without the reader even realizing they are the worse for it.?
ComiXology offers a technically better alternative called CMX-HD. That?s what the company dubbed the comic format for the new iPad, designed for a resolution of 2048x1536. Upgrading to the new format is painless, outside possible storage issues. A copy of Saga #1 (a double issue) took up 18 megabytes on an iPad 2, but it was 38MB for the new iPad. What do you get for double the size?
Cover of Saga #1 on the iPad 2 and new iPad at 2048 by 1536
Glancing at these two images from an iPad 2 and a new iPad at the same resolution, you might not notice a difference. Look for a moment longer and you should. The new iPad is sharper in comparison, though in isolation at 1024x768 on an iPad 2 the difference is negligible even in the hated Guided View. There is, however, one important exception.
From Saga #1, horizontal layers of text from iPad 2 and new iPad at 2048 by 1536
Typography in e-books isn't terribly important to publishers or readers, but it matters in comics. In the above example, Baron Robot XXIII ?speaks? with a monospaced accent. That?s no accident. Every visual element matters in comics, a process broken down into stages beyond the story itself: penciling, coloring, inking, and lettering. Merging the above panel from an iPad 2 and new iPad, the difference is clear. On the new iPad, digital comics have superseded paper in one key aspect. It's a better read. Not that this matters.
No matter how many new iPads Apple sells, there are other tablets (including ones from Apple for this year at least) running at a lower resolution. More importantly, there will be many, many more smartphones with physically smaller displays. Despite the new iPad obviating the need for assisted reading due to fuzzy text, the?future of the digital comic is guided (ugh). Even if it is optional, how long before artists painstakingly guiding the eye by panel layout opt to let software do the work? How long before someone decides to add voices and sound effects? You have to wonder what this kind of transformative tech means... so I sought out a subject matter expert.
Ultimate Comics in all its primary color glory
Ultimate Comics is, bar none, the best comics store near me that doesn?t smell like Cheetos. I mentioned in passing to CEO Jeremy Tarney the first title I ever read, Incredible Hulk #189?from July, 1975. With savant-like ease, he instantly knew he had it (now I do, too). This is an area where digital comics currently fail. There's a lack of back catalogs beyond a few, likely high-profit, titles. After buying my comic touchstone, Tarney took a few minutes to speak with me about digital comics, but first the obvious question:
Do you remember your first comic? "Uncanny X-Men #181," Tarney said. "They fought some dragon. I remember flipping through the pages at the drug store."
I asked about the impact of tablets on the business, whether there?s been either a halo or perhaps pitchfork effect on paper sales due to digital comics.
"The impact of iPad has been minimal at most," Tarney said. "It?s been positive because they?ve been able to read things they might not have picked up because there?s been a free preview? The fact of the matter is most people who are our customers are?not necessarily hardcore?but they?ve been reading comics for a while. They collect comics. They like the physical, actual comic book."
No, I did not ask what, exactly, ?hardcore? readers were like. It's a scary thought no matter the interpretation and not salient to the future of paper comics. To that end, I did query whether paper comics including codes for digital versions had influenced buyers.
"It really doesn?t seem like most people care that much. When they first started doing it they made a big deal about it," Tarney said. "They bagged the issues so you couldn?t get the code out without buying the comic? people didn?t like it? you couldn?t flip through to see if you liked the artwork before buying."
Tarney wasn?t worried about the future of paper comics. To him and his customers, it?s about the ?physical,? the visceral connection between reader and paper in hand. Digital cannot emulate it. Unlike music, the digital reader remains the outlier. It would appear for the casual comic reader, enjoying Hulk battling Mole Men and self-esteem issues on a tablet is a good enough experience. For for the sake of the art form, it appears thankfully not.
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LONDON (AP) ? Every email to your child. Every status update for your friends. Every message to your mistress.
The U.K. government is preparing proposals for a nationwide electronic surveillance network that could potentially keep track of every message sent by any Brit to anyone at any time, an industry official briefed on the government's moves said Sunday.
Plans for a massive government database of the country's phone and email traffic were abandoned in 2008 following a public outcry. But James Blessing of the Internet Service Providers' Association said the government appears to be "reintroducing it on a slightly different format."
Blessing said the move was disclosed to his association by Britain's Home Office during a meeting in recent weeks.
Britain's Home Office declined comment, saying an announcement would have to be made to Parliament first ? possibly as soon as next month.
There was no indication of exactly how such a system would work or to what degree of judicial oversight would be involved, if any.
A Home Office spokesman insisted that any new surveillance program would not involve prying into the content of emails or voice conversations. "It's not about the content," the official said, speaking anonymously in line with office policy. "It's about the who, what, where and when."
In a statement, the Home Office said it's vital that police and intelligence services "are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism, and to protect the public."
Authorities already have access to a huge wealth of communications data, although the standards for retaining it differ depending on whether, for example, conversations are carried out over the phone, in an email, or over an instant messaging program.
Generally, authorities request such information during an investigation. A standardized mass-monitoring program capturing of every email, every post and every tweet would spell the creation of a formidable new surveillance regime.
"It is not focusing on terrorists or on criminals," Conservative lawmaker David Davis told the BBC. "It is absolutely everybody."
"Our freedom and privacy has been protected by using the courts by saying: 'If you want to intercept, if you want to look at something, fine. If it is a terrorist or a criminal, go and ask a magistrate and you'll get your approval.'
"You shouldn't go beyond that in a decent, civilized society, but that is what is being proposed."
Cost could be an issue as well.
Blessing said it would likely require the installation of tens of thousands of specialized pieces of hardware to monitor the country's Internet traffic. The price tag would run into the billions of pounds (dollars), a cost he said would either have to be borne by the taxpayer or by Internet service companies, who would in turn have little choice but to pass it on to their customers.
In either case, U.K. Internet users would be paying extra to allow their government to spy on them more effectively.
The revamped surveillance plans were first reported by Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper.
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Getty ImagesThe NFL?s internal dispute resolution system carries with it an added benefit, above and beyond the fact that the Commissioner gets to make the decision and then determine whether he made the right decision:? The in-house appeal process keeps most of the arguments and facts out of the public eye.
In contrast to courtroom proceedings, which are subject to full public exposure, the only way we?ll know anything about anything that happens during the Saints? bounty appeals is if someone leaks something.
Here?s a little something that has leaked in advance of the hearings.
According to a source with knowledge of the situation, the appeals may consist of arguments based on the fundamental difference between the placement of ?bounties? on players and the actual infliction of injury.? If, in other words, the offer of cash for a ?cart-off? didn?t actually result in a player being carted off, the situation arguably becomes a case of intent without a crime.
Then there?s the possibility that, as it relates to the infliction of injuries, the bounty concept was more hyperbole than reality, with the promise of payments for knocking offensive players out of the game simply a device for getting the defensive players properly motivated to play with reckless abandon and appropriate zeal, different in form but no different in substance from the many other ways that teams get players fired up before games.
Also, one or more of the appeals could focus on the unexplored question of whether other teams did the same or similar things, and thus whether it?s objectively fair to nail the Saints simply because, more than two years after the league investigated the situation and got nowhere, a whistleblower blew the case open.? Nailing the Saints for something that other teams quite possibly have been doing, but that the NFL hasn?t fully investigated, could be painted as inequitable.
Moreover, there?s an unwillingness to accept without scrutiny the work of NFL Security, which somehow was duped by the Saints in 2010, and which otherwise was unable to catch the Saints without the help of a whistleblower.? The raw data generated by NFL Security undoubtedly will be studied and picked apart and, wherever justified, attacked as flawed.
In the end, it may not matter, given that the same office that imposed the penalties is reviewing them.? At this point, any softening of the penalties will create the impression that the league has decided to tolerate bounties.
So while it may not be fair for the Saints to be the scapegoats, the league has little choice.? And the league will undoubtedly justify the punishment based on the fact that the Saints lied about the existence of the bounty system in 2009 ? and that the Saints continued to brazenly use bounties for two seasons after the league investigated the situation.
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