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Ubisoft’s E3 2015 press conference will be hosted by Aisha Tyler and starts at 6 p.m. ET.

Ubisoft will almost certainly show off its new Quebec City developed Assassin’s Creed game and likely a new surprise game as well.

Over the past 20 years, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which takes over the Los Angeles Convention Center on Monday, has solidified itself as an attention-seeking extravaganza for the video game industry. Hundreds of game publishers and developers will hype forthcoming software and hardware through Thursday by employing everything from star-studded parties to scantily clad models.

In an attempt to cut through the noise, a few exhibitors aren’t merely erecting eye-catching booths within the cavernous Convention Center. They’re adding to the already overflowing schedule by holding their own press conferences.

With a file from Associated Press

 

 

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBM5nzJ5Bws&w=940&h=559]

 

EA has a lot of games to show at E3 2015, and a relatively shaky record with press conferences.

The software giant will likely show some of the upcoming game in the Canadian developed Mass Effect franchise. The upcoming fourth Mass Effect game is not being developed out of BioWare Edmonton, as the past games were, but instead out of BioWare Montreal — a studio set up specifically for the the brand.

In addition to Mass Effect, EA will also likely push its upcoming sports titles, Star Wars Battlefront and its recently revealed Mirror’s Edge reboot game.

There could be some surprises from EA, but it’s likely that most of what will be shown is already known.

The company has a tough act to follow, as Bethesda kicked off the world’s most important video-game trade show with a very successful showing of its own on Sunday night.

 

 

The Competition Bureau is intensifying its probe into whether the Canadian subsidiary of Apple Inc. has employed unfair anti-competitive clauses in its contracts with the large and small domestic wireless carriers that sell its iPhone devices in their retail stores across the country.

The law enforcement agency sought approval Monday from the Federal Court in Ottawa to require BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp. and five smaller regional cell-phone providers to produce detailed quantitative data that is expected to shine a light on how wholesale and consumer iPhone agreements are structured and the kind of influence the Cupertino, Calif.-based behemoth has on pricing.

By seeking to widen its inquiry in an attempt to keep tabs on the bargaining power of the world’s largest public company, the Bureau will amass a breadth of information and attempt to compile an exhaustive understanding of highly secretive business arrangements that are otherwise strictly confidential.

Apple is in some hot water and it looks like the Competition Bureau is closing in

Competition Bureau spokesperson Gabrielle Tassé confirmed that these motions were indeed filed Monday morning to aid the agency’s ongoing investigation, but was not aware of the court’s decision.

“There is no conclusion of wrongdoing by Apple Canada Inc. at this time, and no application has been filed with the Competition Tribunal or any other court to seek remedies for any alleged anti-competitive conduct,” Tassé told the Financial Post in an email. “Should evidence indicate that the Competition Act has been contravened, the Commission will not hesitate to take appropriate action.”

The Bureau began its investigation in March of 2014 after becoming aware of potentially anti-competitive clauses that Apple Canada was using in its agreements with Canadian carriers. Then on December 9, it filed an application with the Federal Court to oblige Apple to produce documents related to the probe.

But court filings dated June 4 state that the Commissioner of Competition “does not agree” that the 46,000 records that Apple submitted in March are “acceptable or sufficient” enough. As a result, it is “requesting a more comprehensive data set” from the carriers that sell iPhones: Bell Mobility, Rogers, Telus, MTS Inc., Bragg Communications Inc., Saskatchewan Telecommunications, Tbaytel and Videotron Ltd.

Related

• Apple Inc’s Canadian unit to be ordered to turn over records in iPhone investigation
• Apple Inc supply deals under investigation by Canada’s Competition Bureau

The Bureau is requesting key details about the carriers’ contractual obligations to Apple beginning as early as January 1, 2008. These obligations “may have or may likely have the effect of lessening or preventing competition substantially in a market,” the court filings state. These clauses may therefore be “increasing the price Canadians have paid, are paying or will pay for handset devices and/or other wireless services.”

More specifically, the Bureau is asking carriers to deliver data pertaining to “the resale of handset devices, wireless service plans, the quantities they must purchase from Apple Canada and other similar information relevant for empirical analyses, including econometric analyses,” court documents state. The listed carriers are likely to have facts that are relevant to the inquiry, the Bureau concludes.

Spokespeople from Bell and Rogers declined to comment Monday. Spokespeople from Telus, Bragg, MTS, SaskTel, Videotron and Tbaytel did not immediately respond to telephone requests for comment. Two phone calls to Tara Hendela, a spokesperson for Apple in Canada, were not immediately returned.

“Apple is in some hot water and it looks like the Competition Bureau is closing in,” said a source familiar with the proceeding who asked not to be named. “They’re not going to let this one go.”

With assistance from Gordon Isfeld

cpellegrini@nationalpost.com

At its E3 press conference on Monday, Microsoft announced that full backwards compatibility will be coming to its Xbox One console. This means that all the old software for the Xbox 360 will work on the newer system.

This is a relatively massive technical achievement since the innards of the Xbox One and 360 are fairly different from each other.

The backward compatibility will work with both retail discs and digital titles and will be a free upgrade for all users.

Sony’s PlayStation 4 does not have PlayStation 3 support as of right now.

Microsoft’s E3 2015 press conference is ongoing. You can follow along here.

It’s official. HP CEO Meg Whitman told attendees at the company’s annual Discover conference that November 1, 2015 is the day that the old HP dies, and the duo of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. emerge from the ashes.

As previously announced, Whitman will be president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Dion Weisler will head up HP Inc., with Whitman acting as chair of its board.

From an IT perspective, however, the separation will occur on August 1, giving the companies a three-month shakedown period for their new infrastructure, according to John Hinshaw, chief customer officer and executive vice-president of technology and operations. He said that he has around 5000 people working on teasing apart the IT infrastructure, and the job is already 80 per cent complete.

“I believe it’s the biggest split of its kind,” he told Discover attendees. The separation involves 50,000 servers, 6 data centres, 2,800 applications, 75,000 application interfaces, and is being executed through 570 projects. The teams built 4000 servers over a four-month period, and have so far performed 172,000 integration tests.

“The goal is to make [the split] seamless for our customers,” he said. “We have been trying to set up Hewlett-Packard Enterprise to be ready for the new style of IT.” To do so, the teams have been transforming to a hybrid infrastructure, embracing DevOps, and have moved 1,700 applications to the cloud.

Related

• HP inching closer to launching The Machine computer
• Dell launches proactive support for client systems

Wireless technology from the recently-acquired Aruba Networks will, said Hinshaw, “revolutionize how we work”, and a new Cyber Defence Center in Palo Alto will secure the enterprise.

Hinshaw said that HP plans to share learnings from the exercise with customers, to help them in their IT transitions.

“We’re living in an era of relentless change,” Whitman noted. “We need IT solutions that can move at the speed of business.”

Turning to the future of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, she told attendees, “When we announced the separation, we knew that the new Hewlett-Packard Enterprise would carry a rich legacy. We wanted to build on the past, and create a brand that supports the business we are today and helps define what we will become in the future. We wanted to create an identity that also represents our simpler structure and more focused portfolio. We wanted to send a clear message that the aim of the new organization is to be the best at serving the enterprise needs of your business.”

The new logo, a green rectangle above the words “Hewlett-Packard Enterprise”, is, said Whitman, designed to be “a powerful expression of who we are.” She said that the colour signals growth, opportunity, and sustainability, and the rectangle represents the window of opportunity.

HP Inc. will retain the familiar blue HP logo.

“It’s clear to me that we’re living in an idea economy,” Whitman said, noting that legacy infrastructure in most Fortune 100 companies can hold them back from taking advantage of market opportunities. She believes that the new Hewlett-Packard Enterprise can help companies make the change to become more agile organizations.

But, said Whitman, “One thing never changes for us: the relationships we build with our customers and partners. They were the foundation for the past 75 years, and they will be for years to come.”

Last year at HP’s annual Discover conference, the company laid out ambitious plans for a whole new kind of computer. It was known as The Machine.

The Machine, as described last year, will use a new architecture, and a type of non-volatile memory (that’s memory that doesn’t lose its contents when the power is turned off) known as memristors that has yet to be produced in sufficient quantities to be commercially viable. It would run a completely new operating system, and require different styles of programming.

In other words, it was very much the child of scientists, not of business people in search of a new tool. Even its name – The Machine – was and is a non-commercial name (though I’ll bet it will stick); when head of HP Labs Martin Fink announced it, he joked that the name came into being because HP Labs doesn’t have a marketing department.

Fast forward to 2015, and Fink again took the stage at HP Discover to talk about The Machine. This year, however, his discussion came with a commercial roadmap that could make The Machine a viable product in the not-too-distant future.

In the first iteration, due next year, The Machine will replace memristors with DRAM. While DRAM is definitely not non-volatile, as long as the power stays on, it can serve the same purpose as a memristor. And the ambitious goal of a new operating system has been replaced, by customer demand, by a version of Linux based on Debian.

Related

• Dell launches proactive support for client systems
• Microsoft Corp brings its cloud to Canada to assuage data concerns

That doesn’t mean the dream has died, it just means that there’s recognition that intermediate steps are necessary to get a product out of the door. That’s what science is all about. The next hardware version will probably move from DRAM to phase change memory while scientists continue to struggle with memristors, the ultimate goal. And the new operating system is still very much in the cards.

The Machine’s new architecture remains, however. Rather than being processor-centric, as today’s computers are, it will be memory-centric. The initial systems will consist of a rack crammed full of 320 TB of memory (the largest HP Superdome system only holds 12 TB) and 2500 CPU cores that can handle 10,000 threads. Internal connections will be optical, not copper.

Even the system startup will be unusual. The Machine will boot its memory first, using dedicated CPUs that are inaccessible to applications, and only when memory is fully available will it initialize its working processors. And if processors need to be rebooted, they can do so without affecting memory. Security will be baked in, with all data encrypted both in motion and at rest.

Fink said that there’s an internal debate about the appropriate workloads for The Machine. He wants to make it possible to run existing workloads, such as IBM Watson, as well as doing things that were previously impossible with older technologies. His favourite example: an airline application that holds in memory all information about every airport in the world, their schedules, available gates and crews, and everything else, so if a flight arrives early the system can quickly find it a gate and a crew rather than making it sit on the runway waiting.

The Machine’s memory-driven architecture can do this, and other equally complex tasks, according to Fink. He said that it’s possible to attach any resource to the memory pool – CPUs, GPUs, network interfaces, or even specialized processors designed for specific tasks. He suggested that companies will even be able to embed their own applications into chips, and plug them into The Machine.

Despite the fact that today it’s merely a science project, HP visualizes an ultimate change to memory-centric computing across the industry. Next year, a DRAM-based prototype of The Machine is slated to be available to partners for testing, instrumentation, and software development.

“We’re still on track to deliver [production systems] by the end of the decade,” Fink said.

 

The E3 2015 Microsoft Xbox press conference is the first event for Monday and starts at 12:30 p.m. ET.

What will the Redmond giant reveal?

We know for sure that Microsoft is going to show a large part of Halo 5, possibly including the focus on character-driven four player multiplayer.

We also know that Square-Enix is going to show the first gameplay footage of Rise of the Tomb Raider at Microsoft’s conference. Last year, the announcement that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be exclusive to the Xbox One raised the ire of some fans, so it will be interesting to see how strongly Microsoft attempts to tie the title to its machines.

Additionally, there will likely be more information on how Windows 10 will integrate with Xbox One. Windows 10 is coming just after E3. It’s unclear if this will be a main focus of the press conference or if it will just be a side note.

Will there be more surprises? Likely!

Grab some popcorn at join us!

 

 

TORONTO — BlackBerry Ltd’s move to embrace Android may be aimed at lifting revenue from its software and device management segment, but analysts say it may inadvertently give its device arm a fillip and a new lease on life.

“From the standpoint of marketing, this is a great way for BlackBerry to get visibility. It really doesn’t hurt them much, and the upside is high,” said Rob Enderle, who runs technology consulting firm Enderle Group.

Enderle and other financial and tech analysts agree that the move by BlackBerry does present its own set of challenges as the company would have to support two platforms and potentially put some resources into marketing an Android device, but with little to lose most agree it comes with little downside.

“If Android has one significant weakness it is security and that’s just the thing that BlackBerry can fix, so it could play out pretty well and I am actually quite surprised that they did not try this sooner,” said Enderle, adding that BlackBerry has to deliver a compelling device in order for the gambit to work.

Related

• BlackBerry Ltd Leap review: Low price, but undeniably a BlackBerry
• BlackBerry Ltd CEO still trying to overcome ghosts of RIM ‘king of the hill’ days

Reuters reported on Thursday that BlackBerry was considering a move to test run Android on its upcoming slider device, as part of a bid to convince potential corporate and government clients that its device management system, BES12, is truly able of manage and secure not just BlackBerry devices, but also devices powered by Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

“In order for BES12 to succeed it has to be viewed by all as platform agnostic, and what better way to demonstrate that other than by doing it yourself,” said Ramon Llamas, an analyst with technology research firm IDC.

BlackBerry, which once dominated the smartphone market, has seen its market share drop to under 1 percent, as the iPhone and a slew of Android devices from Samsung have captured market share. John Chen, a turnaround expert brought in to fix its slide, is now pivoting BlackBerry to focus more on its well-regarded software and device management business.

Although the hardware business is becoming less relevant to BlackBerry as it works through its turnaround, the company still needs revenues from hardware as it ramps up new revenue streams.

“It certainly makes sense for BlackBerry’s hardware business to experiment with Android,” said Morningstar analyst Brian Colello. “BlackBerry doesn’t have much to lose. There’s little downside and they just need one hit phone to justify the handset business.”

© Thomson Reuters 2015

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Get yourself up to date with everything we've written in the last seven days - it's weekly roundup time.

 

E3 2015 kicks off with the Bethesda press conference at 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. PT).

This is the first press conference for Bethesda, and shows how the company has become a big player in “triple-A” big-budget games. Bethesda is the company behind such games at Skyrim, Fallout and, after the purchase of ID Software, Doom and Quake.

What do we expect to see? The recently announced Fallout 4 will certainly be shown in more depth, as will the upcoming Doom 4.

Dishonored 2, the sequel to the company’s 2012 sleeper hit was suposed to be a surprise, but news of the game slipped on Friday after hot mic caught developers talking about it.

(This year has been FILLED with leaks.)

Will there be more surprises? Probably! We will see at 10 p.m. ET!

Grab some popcorn and join us!

 

 

 

Seemingly innocuous smart devices can provide ‘pivot points’ into networks where valuable information resides

Here's our latest "60 Second Security" video - catch the week's security news in just 1 minute.

Join Sophos security experts Chester Wisniewski and Paul Ducklin for this week's security podcast. Apple, Microsoft, patching, hacking the army (sort of), and 49 arrests in a Europol action against bank fraudsters!