Month: December 2016

(credit: Kyle Orland)

Super Mario Run's $10 asking price and the Internet connectivity requirement may have earned it some poor reviews in the iTunes Store, but they haven't kept the game from being successful. According to a Japanese press release with quotes from both Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Apple's Phil Schiller, Nintendo says that the game has been downloaded more than 40 million times in its first four days. The app ranks number one in the "Top Free" charts in 140 countries and is in the top 10 in the "Top Grossing" category in 100 countries.

In Mario Run's case, a download isn't quite the same as a purchase, since the app is free to download but requires a one-time $10 purchase to unlock all of its content; most mobile games are free to download and play but charge money for extra content, power-ups, or in-game currency.

The best-selling console Mario game of all time is the original Super Mario Bros., which sold 40.28 million copies by virtue of being included with most new consoles. The iOS audience is obviously much larger than any given game console's audience, and, as with Pokémon Go, that level of success probably won't be sustainable for very long. That is still a promising sign for Nintendo's mobile gaming efforts going forward.

Enlarge / Mark "Flo" Volman and Howard "Eddie" Kaylan of the Top 40 rock group The Turtles performing in 2010 during the Happy Together Tour 25th Anniversary. (credit: Photo by Vallery Jean/FilmMagic)

There are no federal copyrights in sound recordings from before 1972, but some states have granted copyrights in those works.

In 2013, two members of the 1960s rock band The Turtles, who use the company name Flo & Eddie, sued Sirius XM and the Pandora online service, saying they should get paid royalties for their older tunes under state copyright laws. Major record labels filed similar lawsuits shortly thereafter.

It was an untested theory. For music copyright holders, until this week, it was a successful one. After Sirius suffered legal setbacks in cases in both New York and California, the company ended up paying out a $210 million settlement to the RIAA, while Pandora paid $90 million. The Turtles' California case settled just before trial last month on undisclosed terms. A case filed in Florida is still on appeal.

Enlarge / This is not the time to call Windows Support. (credit: National Guard /DOD)

The US Department of Defense announced yesterday that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)—the DOD's internal IT provider—had awarded Microsoft a $927 million, five-year contract to provide what it calls "Microsoft Blue Badge Cardholder Support." The contract is a combination of site license, consulting services, access to Microsoft developers, and actual source code. "These services require access rights to Microsoft's proprietary (closed-source) code, which is licensed under exclusive legal right of Microsoft, and are required to support the Department of Defense's mission," the Department of Defense announcement read.

"Blue Badge Cardholder Support" essentially means direct support from Microsoft's internal employees—not from outsourced contractors (who wear orange badges on the Microsoft campus). The contract gives Microsoft a channel to bill for the direct support provided to DOD for its client, server, and software deployments. This contract is a follow-on to a similar contract DISA awarded Microsoft in June of 2013—a $412 million contract that had its cap raised to $575 million in 2015.

Having direct access to Microsoft's code has played a major role in DISA's push toward bringing all of DOD into an internal, cloud-based e-mail system pioneered by the Army. It also gives DISA a means by which to understand how Microsoft's products work—and potentially request custom modifications of them for DOD's specific use. "The core requirements [for the contract] are for [Microsoft] to provide… consulting services that include software developers and product teams to leverage a variety of proprietary resources and source code, and Microsoft premier support services such as tools and knowledge bases, problem resolution assistance from product developers, and access to Microsoft source code when applicable to support Department of Defense's mission," the contract notice explained.

Enlarge / The Sling AirTV Player. (credit: Sling)

Sling has lifted the curtain on a new "AirTV Player"—a set-top box that combines IPTV with an OTA antenna for local channel reception.

Like every other set-top box on Earth, the AirTV Player hooks up to your Internet connection and plays video, and here the SlingTV service is the primary provider. As a bonus you get Netflix, local TV, and access to the Google Play Store.

Thanks to Zatz Not Funny, we know the device is powered by Android. The site found the FCC docs for the AirTV Player, which indicates it was built by a company called "Technicolor." In the results database for Geekbench, a popular Android CPU benchmark, there is a "Technicolor AirTV Player" listing. The listing shows a device running Android 6.0 on a 1.2GHz ARMv8 SoC with 1GB of RAM. We're not sure if that means it's a custom build of Android or just Android TV.

Enlarge / Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, in June, 2012. (credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

On Tuesday, President Obama announced a surprising move to make most of the US portion of the Arctic Ocean off-limits to oil and gas production indefinitely, along with a line of submarine canyons off the East Coast. The decision cites vulnerable ecosystems, and in the case of the Arctic, the high risk of accidents in an unforgiving environment. At the same time, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the indefinite closure of the entirety of the Canadian Arctic to new drilling leases—though this decision is subject to five-year reviews.

Excluding about 3 million acres in a strip along the coast, which a document released by the Department of the Interior says “has high oil and gas resource potential and is adjacent to existing state oil and gas activity and infrastructure,” the other 125 million acres of Arctic seafloor north of Alaska will be off-limits for new leases. About 200,000 acres had already been leased to oil and gas companies in the past, though there isn’t much industry activity on those leases given the logistical challenges and high costs.

(credit: Department of the Interior)

The Department of the Interior manages the continental shelf area controlled by the US, setting out five-year plans for where leases can be sold. But Tuesday’s action is not an easily reversible five-year leasing plan. Instead, President Obama is using the authority of a 1953 law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Apart from putting the Department of the Interior in charge of leases, the law says that “The president of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the Outer Continental Shelf.”

Enlarge (credit: AT&T)

AT&T yesterday unveiled free robocall blocking for postpaid smartphone customers.

Named Call Protect, the service blocks some fraud calls at the network level before they reach customers' phones. In other cases, when it's less clear whether the call is fraudulent, Call Protect doesn't block the call but shows "suspected spam warnings on the incoming call screen which let customers choose whether or not to answer calls that originate from a suspected spam source," AT&T's announcement said.

At least for now, the service is available only for AT&T postpaid wireless customers with iPhones or Android phones that support AT&T's HD Voice technology. Call Protect is not automatically enabled. Instead, customers can add the feature in their AT&T account settings or the Call Protect app for iPhone and Android. Some Android users complained in the Google Play store reviews that Call Protect doesn't support unlocked devices like the Google Pixel.