The content will raise the maximum rank to 50 with new Rank Rewards. It will also introduce two new playable characters, 20 new trials, a third weapon upgrade for each weapon, and five additional masks. Some of this content will only be available to players above rank 41.

The cost for all this content? 400 Microsoft points, or $5. If you’re more of a fan of the single-player game, don’t worry: you’ll get new content as well. “In the coming months, 2K Games will also be publishing downloadable extensions of the single player experience that provide new insight into the world of Rapture,” 2K Games announced. “These packages will include more narrative, new tools and new challenges that extend the lore and fiction of the failed Utopia under the sea.”

With companies like Ubisoft leading the way to a future where all PC games need to be in contact with their home servers all the time, one group is being particularly harmed by this movement: soldiers stationed in remote locations. Life on deployment is hard, psychologically demanding, and often lonely for soldiers missing their loved ones and families. Gaming is a popular pastime in American bases, but DRM can take that away.

He wanted to keep his name out of the story, but the description of his situation is one we’ve heard from more than a few members of our armed forces who write to us about Internet connections as a vehicle for DRM. “I’m deployed to Iraq right now, and [DRM] has ranged from annoying to unforgivable for me. I would like to let you know that Steam is pretty awesome with working with deployed folks to make sure we can access/play our games,” he told Ars.

“I’ve had hit and miss success with some of the other download companies. Any kind of game that tries to call home, though, is generally more of a problem than it is worth. Especially ones that try to resolve your IP address with your version/purchase location.”

The issue is Internet connectivity. “Net connectivity on some of the larger [Forward Operating Bases]—I’m on Victory Base, it’s HUGE and very built-up—is not terrible. However, we all have severe bandwidth caps with the ‘government sponsored Internet,’ drops in connectivity, or we have to pay a high price for ‘civilian’ Internet,” he explained. The price of his Internet connection? $150 a month for a 192k connection. He also points out that he doesn’t want to sound like he’s complaining about the situation. “There are definitely guys out there who have it much worse.”

None of this is compatible with DRM that requires a constant connection

We get a lot of comments and e-mails about the threat this sort of DRM presents to our gaming troops. In terms of numbers, it’s not like keeping the military from playing your games on base is going to hurt your bottom line in any major way, but when you’re selling single-player games like Assassin’s Creed 2 and forcing gamers to be connected at all times while playing, it effectively means that soldiers won’t be able to play.

With flaky Internet connections or low bandwidth caps, a constant Internet connection is something of a luxury. Soldiers are only one group where reliable, constant Internet connections aren’t common; those in rural areas or frequent travelers also find themselves with time to spend gaming but without a constant Internet connection.

This sort of DRM makes sense for a world where every device is always connected to some magically open and always-on Internet connection. That world is a very long way away, so by requiring an Internet connection at all times to play a game that isn’t online itself is simply alienating an audience. This approach also represents a poor attempt to attack piracy by attacking people who want to pay you money for the game you’ve made impossible for them to play.

The soldier who contacted us said that his base’s PX was pretty good about getting new games—Mass Effect 2 just arrived—but when Assassin’s Creed 2 is released on the PC, it’s doubtful it will find an audience with soldiers who know they may not be able to play the game during their downtime.

1Gbps remains a distant fantasy for most home Internet users, but 2010 is already proving a banner year for the ultra high speed tech. First, there was Google’s big announcement that it would build a major 1Gbps fiber testbed serving up to 500,000 US customers… and at “competitive” prices. Within days of that announcement, a major Canadian ISP also announced is was entering a trial project with 1Gbps technology.

Shaw Communications is a Canadian cable ISP, but the company is becoming an all-fiber player for its new “1000 Mbps” testbed.

“This is game-changing technology,” said Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw. “We are on the leading edge of change with this trial—bringing blazing speeds and new network capabilities that will give us a springboard for future possibilities. It’s really exciting to think how our customers could benefit from this technology.”

It may in fact be “exciting” to “think” about this, but don’t expect service soon, Canadians. Shaw’s 1Gbps trial—the first in the country—begins in April, but Shaw hasn’t even upgraded its network to 100Mbps service yet. Those lower speeds are only obtainable in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, so an actual deployment of a 1Gbps fiber line to your door is years away.

Still, such trials are promising. Well, at least until you consider countries like Japan, where 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home links could actually be purchased commercially as far back as 2008. The price? US$51.40 a month

The Chair of the Federal Communications Commission unveiled a key component of the agency’s impending National Broadband Plan on Wednesday: a program to free up 500MHz of spectrum over the next decade for the mobile wireless industry. The agency will propose a “Mobile Future Auction” that will allow television broadcasters in “spectrum starved” markets to “voluntarily relinquish” licenses in exchange for a cut of the auction proceeds.

Speaking at the New America Foundation, FCC chief Julius Genachowski gave yet another “looming spectrum crisis” speech, warning that mobile high speed Internet—which the government has clearly made the centerpiece of broadband development—must have more licenses to meet exploding demand. He cited figures from Cisco that by 2014, North American wireless networks will carry 740 petabytes of data per month.

“Now even if you think a petabyte is something that sends you to the emergency room, you know that that’s a game-changing trajectory,” Genachowki quipped. “Although the potential of mobile broadband is limitless, its oxygen supply is not,” he added. “Spectrum—our airwaves—really is the oxygen of mobile broadband service. Without sufficient spectrum, we will starve mobile broadband of the nourishment it needs to thrive as a platform for innovation, job creation and economic growth. And the fact is America is facing a looming spectrum crunch.”

Genachowski said that the FCC will work with the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications & Information Agency on developing the 500 MHz plan. The NTIA’s proposed budget for 2011 indicates that 500 MHz project “will focus on making spectrum available for exclusive use by commercial broadband providers or technologies, or for dynamic, shared access by commercial and government users.”

Volunteers needed

The FCC’s boss has to maneuver somewhat gingerly around this issue. The broadcasting industry has given adistinctly cold reception to wireless and consumer device maker proposals for ways that television license holders could dramatically reconfigure their high altitude, high power transmission systems to free up as much as 180 MHz of spectrum. Now the FCC and NTIA are talking about 500 MHz.

So Genachowski emphasized that this would be a “voluntary program.”

“While overwhelmingly—roughly 90%—of Americans receive their broadcast TV programming in most major markets through cable wires or satellite signals,” he assured broadcasters, “there are still millions of Americans who receive TV through over-the-air antenna TV. Broadcasters would be able to continue to serve their communities with free over-the-air local news, information, and entertainment; and they would be able to experiment [with] mobile TV.”

But the spectrum for the FCC’s grand broadband plans has to come from somewhere. As we’ve reported, last week Genachowski disclosed that the document will call for 260 million people to have 100Mbps Internet access by 2020. So Wednesday’s speech was laden with phrases like the “current inefficient spectrum allocation,” and bore down on what Genachowski called the “broad range of analysts” who say that there’s wireless broadband gold in those TV spectrum license hills. He cited studies suggesting that $50 billion in value could be unleashed if even some licenses could be transferred to broadband use. About 300 MHz of spectrum has been reserved for broadcast TV, he noted. But “even in our very largest cities, at most only about 150 megahertz out of 300 megahertz are used.”

“The Mobile Future Auction is a win-win proposal,” Genachowski concluded, “for broadcasters, who win more flexibility to pursue business models to serve their local communities; and for the public, which wins more innovation in mobile broadband services, continued free, over-the-air television, and the benefits of the proceeds of new and substantial auction revenues.”

Magic bullet

We contacted the National Association of Broadcasters to see if they saw this proposal in win-win terms.

“As a one-to-many transmission medium, broadcasters are ready to make the case that we are far and away the most efficient users of spectrum in today’s communications marketplace,” NAB Vice President Dennis Wharton circumspectly told us. “We look forward to working with policymakers to help expand the roll-out of broadband without threatening the future of free and local television, mindful of the fact that local TV stations just returned more than a quarter of our spectrum following our transition to digital.”

Expect broadcasters to emphasize, as you just read, that the TV industry just completed the DTV transition, and that Verizon and other winners in the 2008 700 MHz auction have yet to fully use their newly bought spectrum. But Genachowski noted that the license crunch exists despite these realities. “New technologies allow—indeed, they require—new strategic planning to ensure the most efficient use of spectrum, a vital public resource, especially given our broadband needs,” he explained.

Needless to say, the wireless industry is quite happy with the government’s plans. CTIA’s President and CEO Steve Largent called the speech a “tremendous step forward.” Communications lawyers also say it’s pretty huge. The address “should erase any doubts that the National Broadband Plan will announce that more spectrum for mobile broadband is the magic bullet,” Washington, D.C. attorney John Hane told us. “The FCC is going far beyond spectrum policy or even broadband policy—this is a statement of general federal industrial policy, and it reflects the views of the Administration generally, not just the FCC.”

Hane advised spectrum owners to start paying close attention to where this goes. “Broadcasters and other spectrum incumbents better be vigilant and smart,” he warned. “Incumbent wireless providers should be wary too—if they aren’t using spectrum to its fullest capacity, they could be at risk.”

Last night, a number of Facebook users began getting hundreds of private messages and friend requests intended for other users, according to a Wall Street Journal report. While the problem was only temporary, it adds to the growing concern that Facebook doesn’t do enough to ensure the privacy of its users’ data.

The issue was apparently caused by a problem in some updated code that is used to route messages to users in Facebook’s system. “During our regular code push yesterday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time,” a company spokesperson told WSJ. “Our engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and are working to get everything back in its rightful place.”

The short time span of the problem may explain why it only seemed to affect users that had signed up with Facebook early on in its existence, since Facebook relies on user numbers internally to identify a particular user. However, in that timeframe users received hundreds of messages intended to be private. Though Facebook engineers deleted the errant messages, copies were e-mailed to users that are set to receive automatic notifications of such messages.

The glitch is just one in a growing collection of privacy problems that Facebook has had to address. The company was sued over privacy concerns with its Beacon marketing service—which tied users to data from other websites automatically and without permission—and was shut down as part of the settlement. Most recently, the site has faced complaints to the FTC and a probe from Canada’s privacy commissioner over recent changes to Facebook’s privacy controls.

If you want the game in 3D, or you have multiple monitors, you’ll really see something special. Bad Company 2supports flagship technology from both ATI and NVIDIA. “In BC2 we support the NVIDIA 3D-vision technology. It is an awesome feeling to actually play the game in true 3D. We have had several incidents when someone who has tried it for the first time actually hits the screen when they want to point at something,” Gyllenberg said. “We do also support the Eyefinity tech where you can experience the game on several monitors. Besides that, we also have a support for the new keyboards from Logitech where you will get all the multiplayer stats you need displayed on the small monitor on the actual keyboard.”

The PC has some love coming its way

After playing the PC beta with a mouse and keyboard, it’s hard to imagine playing this game on consoles… but that’s just us. So far the game is slick and fun, and it’s only getting better; the fact the beta code is already so out of date gives us a lot of hope for the final product.

It’s good to see a game from a developer that’s embracing what the PC has to offer, not running from it.

The number of music buyers in the world tanked in 2009 compared to just two years prior, according to market research firm NPD Group. Speaking at the Digital Music Forum: East conference in New York this week, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said that the number of people buying any kind of music—CD or online—dropped by 24 million between 2007 and 2009. Still, total spending per user was up over that same period of time and P2P use was down, meaning the industry still has hope.

It seems the decrease in buyers is largely due to the continued tanking of CD sales—when isolated for just CDs, there were actually 33 million fewer buyers between 2007 and 2009, according to Billboard. Essentially, the number of buyers going for digital (online) music went up over those two years, but not enough to offset the massive drop in physical media.

The news was not all bad though; average spending per buyer was up 2 percent overall, again thanks to digital music buyers. Digital music spending per buyer, specifically, was up a whopping 52 percent over the two-year period.

Much of NPD’s data isn’t unsurprising; CD sales have been falling for years now and the world of digital music has made it easy for buyers to cherry-pick the songs they like, therefore reducing overall music revenue. The increase in digital music spending per buyer, though, shows that people who are buying online are getting more and more into albums again. This is supported by recent data from Nielsen, which shows that digital album sales were up 16.1 percent between 2008 and 2009 (with digital track sales going up 8.3 percent).

Crupnick also mentioned that there was a noticeable drop (six percent, according to ZeroPaid) in music downloaded via P2P, which he attributed to low-quality files, spyware, and people sharing files via non-P2P methods. Indeed, with a now-plentiful array of choices when it comes to legal, DRM-free offerings online, there are few reasons to pirate music. Another possible contributor to the decline in P2P usage could be the explosion in Internet radio channels and other streaming options.

In fact, NPD noted that free Internet radio is tied to a 41 percent increase in paid downloads too. Not only could it be sating people’s interest in hearing songs before they spend money (one of the major reasons to use P2P in the first place), but it’s helping users discover new music as well.

Current Virus Threats – Last 24 Hour Analysis:
1. Win32/Zafi.B worm Infected PC’s: 3049

2. a variant of Win32/M… Infected PC’s: 1068

3. a variant of Win32/I… Infected PC’s: 679

4. Win32/Adware.XPAntiS… Infected PC’s: 98

5. Win32/Netsky.C worm Infected PC’s: 96

Other names: W32.Erkez.B

Win32/Zafi.B is a worm spreading via e-mail and P2P networks. It runs on Windows 95 and higher versions. Its size is 12800 bytes compressed by the FSG utility. After its decompression its size is 49 kB.

The worm arrives in an e-mail message with randomly selected subject line and body from the pre-defined subject lines and bodies specified in the worm code. The text in the subject line might be for example:

eIngyen SMS!

The furor over the Harriton High School webcam spying caper continues to grow. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating whether the school broke any federal wiretap laws when it remotely spied on a student at home, an anonymous official told the Associated Press. A federal grand jury has also subpoenaed the school for records related to the so-called “security” measures implemented on the laptops that allowed officials to activate the webcams to see people using them, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Lower Merion School District (LMSD) has also started talking to the press about the incident. Spokesman Doug Young told the AP that the school had activated the webcams on the school-issued laptops 42 times over the last year or so, but never to spy on the students. LMSD had said on Friday—when it decided to indefinitely suspend the practice—that the feature was there solely for security purposes in order to locate lost or stolen laptops.

With more than 2,300 of these laptops issued across the district, it’s impractical to assume that every student was in danger of being spied on. However, it’s clear that LMSD knows where it ran afoul: by not letting parents know about the feature when having them sign the paperwork for the computers. “There was no specific notification given that described the security feature,” Young told the Inquirer. “That notice should have been given, and we regret not giving it. That… was a significant mistake.”

A “significant mistake” barely describes the situation now that there’s not only a lawsuit, but the FBI is also involved. As of Monday morning, the school’s lawyers are being called to court so a judge can decide whether to bar the school from removing data from any of the 2,300 laptops.

The students all have their pet theories on what’s really going on, too. On Friday, we quoted one former Harriton High School student (who had originally posted his comments on Digg) who said he and his friends noticed the webcam’s green light come on “from time to time,” and some students worried that the school’s IT admins had been spying on them. Another current student e-mailed Ars to say that the light does turn on occasionally, but only after a reboot —something he assumes to be a “Mac hardware glitch” (one that none of us on staff have ever experienced on our Macs; perhaps it could be a glitch of the software used to remotely access the laptops).

The current student did say, however, that the entire student population has been aware of the school’s ability to turn on the webcams for quite some time due to “a widely circulated story that one of our laptops ended up in Pakistan, and they were taking pictures of the current owner.” How this information never managed to make it to any of the parents is a mystery, and we are still left wondering what student Blake J. Robbins could have been doing in front of his MacBook to warrant being disciplined for “improper behavior.”

Update: Blake Robbins’ attorney spoke to NBC Philadelphia (video link) and claims the school “caught” Robbins with two Mike & Ike candies in his hand, which look like pills. The student apparently eats the candies “religiously” and the school overreacted to the image.