Last week, Rage on Gaming (www.rageongaming.com) launched “Al Qaeda Wars.” It promoted the title as “an innovative new social game application in which players could become terrorists or counter terrorists.” Briefly available on Facebook.com, the application was removed due to reviews that the content was unacceptable.
In the application, it was possible to go on missions, build a global network and participate in special “Jihads” that depicted the total destruction of famous landmarks utilizing realistic flash effects. Among these landmarks were the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Taj Mahal and the Sphinx. All the terrorists depicted were Middle Eastern in appearance.
According to Rage on Gaming, “Al Qaeda Wars puts players into situations in which they have to use their friends and fellow players to attack each other. To accomplish this they can buy different types of weapons, ranging from sniper rifles to stinger missiles to dirty bombs. Players can launch different types of Google map attacks against other players that include truck bombs and suicide bombers.”
The developers warned that content in the application was “not suitable for everyone because of its use of dramatic violence.” There were no remarks concerning the other offensive aspects of the title. Although the application has been removed from Facebook, the developer is still hosting limited demos of the title at its website. As Arab News went to press, there had been no comment from the developers on why they thought it acceptable to create and launch such an application. A Whois lookup showed that rageongaming.com is held through a proxy registration in the United States.
Omani citizens have started activating the ePurse application in their e-ID card. Security firm Gemalto was contracted to activate this application on the cards after the e-IDs had been deployed. According to the company, this is a world’s first, and demonstrates the possibility of offering new e-services to citizens, using their current e-ID. Some of the e-IDs brought into the program were issued in 2005.
Gemalto supplied BankMuscat and the Royal Oman Police with Coesys ePurse, the company’s turnkey solution that includes the ePurse in the card, the post-issuance solution to activate the application and the centralized system to manage the transactions. BankMuscat, which acts as an issuer of the ePurse, initiated and implemented the project. Going forward, Oman’s Information Technology Authority will host the ePurse system in-house and expand the application to all the banks in Oman.
With the Gemalto solution, Omani citizens and residents will be able to benefit from the convenience of ePurse without the need to renew their e-ID cards. The ePurse can be used to pay for government fees notably for birth and marriage certificates, car registrations, driving licenses and visa applications. The e-IDs with ePurse may also be used to top-up mobile phone prepaid subscriptions and make purchases in a number of large supermarkets. In the future, the ePurse application will enable payment at public car parks and toll gates.
ASiQ Ltd, the licensee for the aviation SafeCell system, has successfully tested the new MMS capability of the system on the latest Thuraya network and the existing Inmarsat network. Having recently launched a low cost cell phone solution for Bizjets using Iridium satellites, ASiQ is now concentrating its efforts on the upcoming airline program. As part of the airline system, passengers will not only be able to send inexpensive SMS, IM and text email from their mobile phones, but photos as well. SafeCell MMS is a proprietary system that can deliver an in-flight MMS service, with a transaction cost of as little as 50 US cents globally.
According to Ron Chapman ASiQ’s CEO, the only way the company believes it is possible to provide cost effective mobile phone communications is to stay outside the global mobile roaming system, thereby avoiding roaming charges. These are standard with the existing in-flight mobile phone solutions. By using satellite communications and focusing on data only, ASiQ is able to substantially reduce the cost and weight of the hardware to less than ten percent of competitive systems, making it affordable for all airlines. The first certifiable hardware is scheduled for delivery later this year.
A recent IDC study reveals that worldwide revenue from Linux operating system software grew by 23.4 percent from 2007 to 2008, and that growth will be followed by a 2008-2013 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.9 percent. With this growth, worldwide Linux operating systems revenue will cross $1 billion for the first time in 2012, growing to $1.2 billion by 2013. The top revenue-producing vendors are Red Hat and Novell, which together accounted for 94.5 percent of worldwide Linux operating systems revenue in 2008.
Additionally, more customers are seeing nonpaid Linux as a viable solution for certain non-critical business needs. This is despite the lack of commercial applications and the potential support challenges that come with a non-commercially-supported distribution. IDC found that nonpaid Linux server operating systems continued to increase in importance on the overall market dynamics, with nonpaid Linux server operating system deployments accounting for 43.3 percent of the worldwide total, up from 41.4 percent in 2007.