Web 'brain' for robots goes live

8 March 2013 Last updated at 06:55 ET

Robots confused about what they encounter in the world of humans can now get help online.

European scientists have turned on the first part of a web-based database of information to help them cope.

Called Rapyuta, the online "brain" describes objects robots have met and can also carry out complicated computation on behalf of a robot.

Rapyuta's creators hope it will make robots cheaper as they will not need all their processing power on-board.

The Rapyuta database is part of the European Robo Earth project that began in 2011 with the hope of standardising the way robots perceive the human world.

Instead of every robot building up its own idiosyncratic catalogue of how to deal with the objects and situations it encounters, Rapyuta would be the place they ask for help when confronted with a novel situation, place or thing.

In addition, the web-based service is able to do complicated computation on behalf of a robot - for example if it needs to work out how to navigate a room, fold an item of clothing or understand human speech.

The system could be particularly useful for drones, self-driving cars or other mobile robots who have to do a lot of number crunching just to get round, said Mohanarajah Gajamohan, technical head of the project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Cloud control

"On-board computation reduces mobility and increases cost." said Dr Heico Sandee, Robo Earth program manager at the Dutch University of Technology in Eindhoven in a statement. As wireless data speeds increase more and more robotic thinking could be offloaded to the web, he said.

Without access to such a database, roboticists fear machines will be restricted to working in very tightly controlled environments such as production lines and never live easily alongside humans.

The project, which involves researchers at five separate European research labs, has produced the database as well as software that robots can run to connect to and quiz Rapyuta.

The name Rapyuta is taken from the Japanese film by Hayao Miyazaki Castle in the Sky - in the film it is the place where all the robots live.

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Million dollar appeal for Ultima sequel

8 March 2013 Last updated at 12:46 ET

One million dollars are being sought on Kickstarter for a sequel to the long-running Ultima series of video games.

The cash is being sought by legendary British developer Richard Garriott who created the original titles which helped define the fantasy gaming genre.

Ultima gave rise to Ultima Online which was one of the first significantly popular massively multiplayer games.

The PC game, called Shroud of the Avatar, is scheduled to be ready to play in October 2014.

Mr Garriott is expected to make a formal announcement about the game and the funding push at the SXSW arts and media festival currently under way in Austin, Texas,

In an introductory video on the Kickstarter webpage Mr Garriott, often known by his in-game alias Lord British, said the current crop of fantasy video games had become too formulaic and scripted.

Instead, he said, Shroud of the Avatar would be a much more open experience in which players were free to follow their own path. It would be more about playing a useful role in an online world than just racking up kills and loot to make a character more powerful, he said.

Space trip

It would also take some elements from Ultima Online such as player housing and a detailed crafting system.

Work had already begun on the game, said Mr Garriott, but those backing it via the crowd-funding site would also get a say in how it would be built.

Alec Meer, a writer at games news site Rock Paper Shotgun, expressed surprise that Mr Garriott had to appeal for funds via Kickstarter given that in 2009 he spent millions of dollars to take a trip into space.

"It's just a shame to see so many already wealthy industry old-hands making hay with all these old-fashioned role-playing games when so many dramatically more inventive and ambitious ideas from smaller studios are failing to reach their targets," he added.

Shroud of the Avatar is being created by a company called Portalarium that Mr Garriott set up after the failure of an online game called Tabula Rasa that he helped to develop.

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Dragons' Den announces newest member

10 March 2013 Last updated at 22:32 ET

Cloud computing pioneer Piers Linney has been named as the new member of the Dragons' Den, replacing Theo Paphitis.

Linney, the joint chief executive of Outsourcery, previously featured on TV in the Channel 4 show Secret Millionaire.

Linney will join regulars Duncan Bannatyne, Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden and another new Dragon, Kelly Hoppen.

In the BBC Two show, business leaders hear pitches from entrepreneurs before deciding whether to invest.

Linney said he was "excited" and would "widen the appeal of the Den to information economy entrepreneurs," adding, "they are key to the future success of the UK economy."

The qualified solicitor also worked as an investment banker and venture capital fund manager and was named in The Power List of the UK's 100 most influential black Britons.

His company Outsourcery was launched in 2007 and employs 150 people across the UK.

Executive producer Ceri Aston called Linney's story "inspiring", adding: "Piers is a new breed of dragon. A young and dynamic digital entrepreneur, he has his finger on the pulse of an industry that has never been represented in the Den before.

Departing dragon Paphitis said "The time felt right to give up my seat, stop breathing fire and allow someone else to enjoy the wonderful experience of being a Dragon."

Haulage firm boss Hilary Devey left the show last year for her own Channel 4 series and interior designer Kelly Hoppen was announced as a new dragon last month.

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Hackers target Australian bank

11 March 2013 Last updated at 03:55 ET

Australia's central bank has confirmed that it has been targeted by hackers.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said it had "on occasion been the target of cyber attacks", following a report in an Australian newspaper.

The report documented hacking incidents dating back to 2011, including malware embedded in emails.

The bank said no data had been lost and its systems had not been corrupted, but did not comment on reports the attacks originated in China.

China has frequently been blamed for similar cyber attacks, targeting economic or business information.

In a statement the RBA said: "The bank has comprehensive security arrangements in place which have isolated these attacks and ensured that viruses have not been spread across the Bank's network or systems.

"At no point have these attacks caused the Bank's data or information to be lost or its systems to be corrupted."

Malware used

According to an investigation by the Australian Financial Review, one of the attacks involved an email entitled "Strategic Planning FY2012" which was sent to and opened by several members of staff.

It contained a malware application, which had managed to bypass existing security controls, but was not able to spread through the computer system.

Another targeted information relating to the G20 meetings.

The bank did not comment on reports that the malware came from China.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that it is behind cyber attacks, which security experts say target sensitive governmental and commercial information.

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Alibaba appoints new chief executive

11 March 2013 Last updated at 04:08 ET

China's e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group, has named Jonathan Lu Zhaoxi as its new chief executive.

Mr Lu will replace the group's founder Jack Ma, who announced in January that he was stepping down to make way for a younger crop of leaders at the firm.

The 43-year-old Mr Lu joined Alibaba in 2000 and has led the group's various key divisions, including the online payment service Alipay.

Mr Ma founded Alibaba in 1999 and will remain the group's executive chairman.

"Jonathan and I have worked together for 13 years," Mr Ma said.

"Not only has he contributed to building our culture and organisation and developed many talented people, he also possesses a unique leadership style and charisma."

'Pressures and challenges'

Continue reading the main story

We live in an era of rapid change where pressures and challenges co-exist"

End Quote Jonathan Lu Zhaoxi Alibaba

Alibaba Group is the parent company behind Alibaba.com, an online marketplace for small businesses, Taobao, a shopping site for consumers, as well as Alipay, an online payment service.

It was one of the earliest entrants in the Chinese internet market and has enjoyed tremendous success as China has gone on to become the world's biggest internet market with more than 500 million users.

The size of the market is expected to grow even further as more users in rural areas get access to the internet.

But as the market has grown, so has the competition.

As a result, Alibaba has been trying to restructure its operations to ensure that it continues to grow and dominate the market.

Last year, it bought back its shares in Alibaba.com, the only listed division of the group, and took it private.

Over the past few months it has announced a plan to break up its business into 25 different units that will be led by different executives.

The newly appointed chief executive said the firm needed to ensure that it continued to satisfy its customers if it was to maintain its dominant position.

"We live in an era of rapid change where pressures and challenges co-exist, but we must not forget our purpose and keep in mind the premise of 'Customer First'," Mr Lu said in a statement.

Mr Lu will take charge of the group from 10 May.

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UK universities 'face online threat'

11 March 2013 Last updated at 06:23 ET By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

"Complacent" British universities that fail to respond to the rise of online universities will be swept away by global competition, says a report into the future of higher education.

Sir Michael Barber, chief education adviser for Pearson, says online courses will be a "threat and opportunity" for the UK's universities.

This "avalanche" could see some middle-ranking universities closing, he says.

"There are too many universities doing the same thing," says Sir Michael.

The report, An Avalanche is Coming, argues that higher education faces an unpredictable global revolution, driven by the impact of the rise in online universities.

Globalisation

In the face of such an avalanche, Sir Michael says that "standing still" is the most dangerous option.

"The big risks are complacency and timidity," he says.

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

The former Downing Street adviser says he would be "very surprised" if such disruption in higher education did not mean the closure of some universities within a decade.

The report, published by the IPPR think tank, warns that the UK's universities will have to adapt to direct international competition.

There are already big US networks of universities offering courses to students anywhere in the world, with two consortiums having already signed up almost four million students.

These offer hundreds of courses from partner universities in Europe and Asia as well as the US.

These so-called MOOCs - massive open online courses - give students online access to lectures and courses from leading academics and universities around the world.

Sir Michael says this creates an opportunity for the UK - and that there is nothing inevitable about this emerging market being dominated by big players from the US.

Futurelearn, an online consortium of UK universities, is expected to launch courses later this year.

Re-inventing universities

Sir Michael forecasts that this more competitive environment will see the component parts of universities being "unbundled".

Research could be taken over by private specialist institutions or universities could focus on the quality of teaching, using lectures and course materials created elsewhere.

Continue reading the main story

Just as globalisation and technology have transformed other huge sectors of the economy in the past 20 years, in the next 20 years universities face transformation"

End Quote An Avalanche is Coming report into higher education

It could also see universities emerging that are more systematically integrated with their local economies.

Such internationalisation will also mean challenges for national government, says Sir Michael.

The current undergraduate finance model, where students borrow to study for three years in a UK institution, does not provide for a future in which students might want to take course units from a range of universities, both in the UK and abroad.

Sir Michael also says the government will have to reconsider how they can develop start-up businesses around universities, following the pattern of hi-tech industries in the United States growing around Stanford University in California and MIT in the Boston area.

"The certainties of the past are no longer certainties. The models of higher education that marched triumphantly across the globe in the second half of the 20th Century are broken," write the report authors, Sir Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly and Saad Rizvi.

"Just as globalisation and technology have transformed other huge sectors of the economy in the past 20 years, in the next 20 years universities face transformation."

Sir David Bell, vice chancellor of Reading University, said: "Success in the future will depend on agility, rather than a simple choice between one model of university or another."

He suggested that this would mean combining advanced research and international campuses as well as being "intensely local".

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EA sorry over 'dumb' SimCity launch

11 March 2013 Last updated at 07:25 ET

Electronics Arts has apologised for the shambolic launch of the latest version of town-planning title SimCity.

Gamers have reported long queues to play, bugs and other glitches since SimCity launched on 5 March.

The company said the way it had set up the launch had been "dumb" and that it "really feels bad" about the way gamers had suffered.

As compensation, all those who bought SimCity will be offered a free Electronics Arts PC game this month.

Since the game launched, the online computers that co-ordinate play have been regularly overwhelmed.

Many gamers reported waiting 30 minutes or more before they could start to construct a city and said the game was sluggish once they were playing. Others said it often crashed or was slow to respond to changes.

The troubles led online store Amazon to briefly suspend sales of the download version of the game.

In a blogpost, Lucy Bradshaw, general manager for SimCity, said the way Electronics Arts (EA) and Maxis, the studio that created the game, had set up the servers had contributed to the problems.

Unlike all other versions of SimCity, the latest requires gamers to remain online while they play, as each city they construct sits on a chunk of virtual territory shared with other players.

These regions share certain over-arching characteristics such as crime levels, resources and pollution.

However, said Ms Bradshaw, the way people played the finished game was very different to what EA and Maxis had seen during early, or beta, testing.

She wrote: "A lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played, and played in ways we never saw in the beta."

"OK, we agree that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it," she added.

To clear the queues, EA had doubled the number of servers supporting the game, Ms Bradshaw said.

In addition, it had engineers working on fixes for the bugs.

This work, said Ms Bradshaw, had led the number of "disrupted experiences" to drop by 80%.

Features that had been turned off late last week to help lighten the load on servers would be restored soon, she added.

As compensation for the trouble, players would soon be offered a free PC game from EA's catalogue, said Ms Bradshaw.

Emails detailing how to claim the free game would be sent out on 18 March, she added.

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'Revenge porn' site owner is sued

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Intrade shuts amid investigation

11 March 2013 Last updated at 09:15 ET

Online trading platform Intrade has ceased all trading activity pending an investigation.

In a statement on its website it blamed the halt on "circumstances recently discovered... that may include financial irregularities".

The move means users will not be able to withdraw money from their accounts.

Dublin-based Intrade allows users to place bets on future events by buying and selling contracts in a similar way to the financial markets.

Users can bet on everything from who will be the next Pope to how much snow will fall in a given winter.

It is favoured by academics and journalists who often use the site's odds as indications of public sentiment, particularly when it comes to predicting US presidential elections.

'Investigate further'

"With sincere regret we must inform you that due to circumstances recently discovered we must immediately cease trading activity," Intrade said in its statement, saying the shutdown had been required under Irish law.

"These circumstances require immediate further investigation, and may include financial irregularities.

"During the upcoming weeks, we will investigate these circumstances further and determine the necessary course of action."

The company did not elaborate, and it is not clear if or when it will resume operations.

In November Intrade suffered a severe blow to its business when regulators forced it to suspend all trading in the United States - its biggest market.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against the company, arguing that it violated US trading laws.

It lost tens of thousands of users as a result of the legal action.

Intrade was founded in 1999 by John Delaney. He died in May 2011 while attempting to climb Mount Everest.

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Harlem Shake sparks royalties row

11 March 2013 Last updated at 11:06 ET

Reggae artist Hector Delgado and rapper Jayson Musson say the producer of the chart-topping hit Harlem Shake did not have permission to use their voices.

The pair are now asking for compensation from record label Mad Decent Records, which released the single, reports the New York Times.

Harlem Shake has become an internet sensation on video website YouTube.

Producer Harry Rodrigues, also known as DJ Baauer, and Mad Decent Records declined to comment.

Musson told the New York Times the record label had been "more than co-operative" but an agreement had not yet been reached.

The song has inspired thousands of people around the world to upload videos of themselves dancing along to the first 30 seconds of the track - up to 4,000 a day are currently being put onto YouTube, according to the website.

The song was initially released in 2012.

Rights issues

Delgado can be heard at the beginning of the track singing, "Con los terroristas," a sample from a single he released in 2006.

Musson shouts, "Do the Harlem Shake," about 15 seconds in, which he says is taken from a rap by his group Plastic Little in 2001.

In the New York Times, Delgado's agent, Javier Gomez, described the situation as "a clear breaking of intellectual property rights".

Last month in an "ask me anything" session on website Reddit, Rodrigues was asked about the origin of a female Spanish vocal that also features on the track.

"Found it on the innerweb," he wrote in reply.

Barney Hooper, from PRS for Music, which represents the rights of artists and performers, told the BBC: "If one piece of music is sampled in another, then typically the creators of the original work would be entitled to a share of royalties when the new work is played, performed or reproduced," he said.

"A song can have a number of songwriters/composers and use samples of other works.

"If this is the case, all could have an ownership share in the new work and these would be registered with organisations like PRS for Music.

"We then pay out the royalties we collect based on the ownership shares registered with us."

However the situation was sometimes complicated, Mr Hooper added.

"There are often ownership disputes relating to popular works where others musical works are sampled," he said.

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