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“Small victory,” was all it said on the subject line of Karen Meredith’s e-mail.

But for the Silicon Valley military mom, who lost her son in the Iraq war, the decision this week by U.S. military base exchanges not to carry the controversial “Medal of Honor” video game was still great news.

“I’m thrilled,” said Meredith, whose son, Lt. Ken Ballard, perished in 2004. She has set off a storm of protest against Redwood City-based Electronic Arts and its “first-person shooter” game, which allows players to pretend they’re Taliban fighters killing American soldiers in Afghanistan. She applauded Maj. Gen. Bruce Casella, commander of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, for the decision to keep the game out of its stores worldwide.

“I’ve heard from people all over the world, many of them upset about this game, so at least this has started a conversation,” she said. “And this country needs to have a conversation about the place of violent video games in our society, especially a game based on an ongoing war.”

Due out Oct. 12, “Medal of Honor” has drawn accolades from gamers and has been defended even by some U.S. soldiers. But it has unleashed howls of protest from families who have lost loved ones and even from Great Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox, who urged retailers to “ban this tasteless product.”

Electronic Arts spokesman Jeff Brown on Friday issued a statement that said in part: “The criticism

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of ‘Medal of Honor’ is disappointing because I can’t think of another interactive game that has gone to such lengths to convey respect for soldiers. From the very first day of development, the ‘Medal of Honor’ development team has been dedicated to creating an homage to the soldiers who fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

Saying EA feels “a deep sympathy and respect for the soldiers and people with family members killed or wounded in Afghanistan,” Brown wrote that “we don’t see a distinction between a film like ‘Hurt Locker’ and a game like ‘Medal of Honor.’ We don’t agree that it’s OK to depict the war in films and books, but not in games. We don’t see a moral difference.”

Meredith and her fellow military moms don’t buy it, saying that by allowing participants to assume the role of Taliban and kill American soldiers like her son, EA has crossed the line. And while she’s heartened by the AAFES decision, she’s still not satisfied.

“The fact that the Army has responded this way tells me that I’m not the only one upset about this,” she said Friday. “Now I want EA to pull the game on their own because it’s the right thing to do.”

This week’s decision by AAFES, which many bloggers, gamers and even American soldiers criticized as censorship, impacts all Army and Air Force Exchange operations worldwide, including AAFES’ website and GameStop locations on military bases. An AAFES spokesman said all pre-orders and reservations placed online would be canceled and any pre-orders placed through GameStop locations on Army and Air Force installations would be transferred to off-base ones.

“We regret any inconvenience this may cause authorized shoppers, but are optimistic that they will understand the sensitivity to the life-and-death scenarios this product presents as entertainment,” Casella said in a statement. “As a military command with a retail mission, we serve a very unique customer base that has, or possibly will, witness combat in real life.”

But Army Pvt. Mitchell Blackburn in Bamberg, Germany, complained to Stars and Stripes newspaper that those who banished the game “are not giving people the credit to distinguish fiction from reality. People know it is a video game. “… Just because you are playing as [the Taliban] does not mean you really want to kill Americans or coalition forces.”

It was not immediately clear how the move might affect EA’s bottom line. AAFES said its base/post exchanges did $176 million in video-games sales in 2009.

Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689.

After recent settlements by Hewlett-Packard and EMC in a long-standing government contracting fraud case, three major IT and consulting companies are still embroiled in lawsuits brought by two former insiders.

Lawsuits alleging a widespread kickback scheme among U.S. government IT contractors remain active against Accenture, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems, according to court documents and a lawyer for whistleblowers Norman Rille and Neal Roberts. Rille, a former manager for Accenture, and Roberts, a former partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, filed the lawsuits in 2004 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The two whistleblowers alleged that several IT vendors and systems integrators entered into so-called alliance partnerships that provided a formal mechanism for providing kickbacks. The U.S. Department of Justice filed to join the case against HP, Sun and Accenture in April 2007.

Rille and Roberts allege that IT companies paid kickbacks to Accenture and other systems integrators in exchange for preferential treatment on government contracts the systems integrators were working on, or in exchange for strong recommendations to potential government customers.

Systems integrators are supposed to provide objective advice to government agencies, and contracting laws prohibit systems integrators from receiving anything of value for recommending the purchase of a vendor’s products, said Ron Packard, a lawyer for Rille and Roberts.

In the HP case, Rille became aware of referral fees and special discounts from HP to Accenture, said Packard, of the Packard, Packard and Johnson law firm in Los Altos, California. “When Mr. Rille left his employment with Accenture, he took with him over 700,000 pages of documents, many of which involve HP,” he said.

HP settled the case and another contracting complaint brought by the DOJ by agreeing to pay US$55 million, the agency announced Monday. In May, EMC agreed to pay the U.S. government $87.5 million to settle similar charges.

HP denied any wrongdoing but said it was “in the best interest of our stakeholders to resolve the matter,” the company said in a statement.

Computer Sciences agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle the case in May 2008. In August 2007, IBM agreed to pay just under $3 million and PricewaterhouseCoopers agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle similar complaints.

A Cisco representative declined to comment on the ongoing case.

Accenture believes it did nothing wrong, said spokesman Jim McAvoy. “Accenture is confident its alliance agreements with third-party vendors were appropriate and lawful,” he said. “The government knew about alliance relationships in the IT industry, which were widely reported in the industry press. Accenture itself disclosed in proposals the fact that it had alliance agreements with IT vendors.”

The company is “defending our position vigorously and expect to prevail,” he added.

Representatives of Sun’s parent company, Oracle, did not respond to a request for comment on the pending case. But Sun, on Tuesday, filed a response to an amended complaint, with the company denying most of the allegations brought by Rille and Roberts.

While Sun paid so-called influencer fees to systems integrators or resellers, the company “denies that it made any payments to improperly influence a government customer’s selection of a Sun product,” Sun’s lawyers wrote in their Tuesday response.

Sun’s lawyers disputed allegations that the company did not disclose its payments to systems integrators and resellers to the U.S. government. “Not only were Sun’s reseller and rebate programs well know to the government, but the government actually encouraged Sun to pay its resellers rebates, discounts and other remuneration … to promote price competition and better pricing to the U.S. government,” Sun’s lawyers wrote.

Earlier in August, Judge William Wilson Jr. in Arkansas denied Sun’s motion to dismiss the case.

Accenture, Cisco and Sun have all had settlement talks in the case, said Packard, the lawyer for Rille and Roberts. “Accenture may very well go to trial, and we have had teams gathering a great deal of evidence for that,” he said.

Under the U.S. False Claims Act, whistleblowers can collect a percentage — usually between 15 and 30 percent — of the proceeds the U.S. government recovers in lawsuits alleging fraudulent payments of government funds.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantusG. Grant’s e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

There were a lot of rumors and expectations ahead of Apple’s much-hyped music event yesterday. As expected, Apple unveiled a new touch-based iPod Nano, and an iPod Touch sporting the company’s A4 processor, its super-high-resolution Retina display, and front and rear cameras offering HD video recording and video chat via FaceTime. There was also a new iPod Shuffle, which thankfully returns to the previous iteration’s design with on-device buttons and a clip to make it wearable.

While the iPods and Apple’s upcoming updates for iOS 4 — next week for the iPhone and iPod Touch, November for the iPad — were big announcements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs also introduced a revamped Apple TV and iTunes 10 featuring Apple’s new “Ping” social network for music. Both represent major moves for Apple that point to where it hopes to go in the years ahead.

Apple TV

I reviewed the original Apple TV three years ago, when it was first introduced. I was immediately a fan — and I still am, particularly given the improvements Apple has made to the user interface over the years.

As many had speculated, the latest Apple TV, due out by the end of the month, relies on streaming content and has no internal hard drive like the first version. As Jobs said: “People won’t want to manage storage. And they don’t want to sync to their computer…. It’s too complicated.” And it’s not an iOS device. So much for the talk that it would run something akin to the operating system in the iPhone 4 and iPad. As the Apple rumor mill predicted, though, it’s much smaller than the original — a quarter the size — and hits the $99 price point that tends to be the “sweet spot” for set-top boxes.

There seems to be a lot to like about the $99 Apple TV beyond the new, lower price, including Netflix integration and the AirPlay feature. There’s also a move toward simplicity, with a reduced number of ports. This is a mixed blessing. Sure, a lot of consumers are perplexed by the options offered by their HDTV sets and surround-sound home theater receivers. (There’s a reasons Best Buy’s Geek Squad and similar services seem to be thriving.) For many people, each new device they add to their entertainment system creates more confusion. Apple’s decision to offer just HDMI and TOSLink outputs is a plus.

But there’s a downside. While modern televisions and receivers come with an array of input ports, they generally have, at best, two of each. My own TV has two HDMI ports. My cable box takes up one of them. If I have any other HDMI device (a TiVo, the cable/satellite box or a game system, for instance), I’ll have no way to hook up my the new Apple TV. Likewise, my receiver has only two TOSLink inputs. I might be able to devise a solution to this problem fairly easily, but my father and a large number of my friends won’t be able to.

Another design aspect bothers me, too: the tiny size and weight. I appreciate Apple’s less-is-more minimalist design, but there’s something to be said for hardware with a bit of heft — something that can’t be easily knocked behind the entertainment cabinet or pulled onto the floor by heavy cables connecting it to other devices. I can easily envision the new lightweight Apple TV — it weighs just over half a pound — being pulled behind the TV and onto the floor, where the cat would be more than happy to consider it a toy.

Beyond the hardware, Apple offered a stylish design update with the device. Eliminating the need to sync it with a computer should reduce confusion for technophobic users. And, let’s face it, with the limited storage available on previous models, most people ended up streaming a lot of content anyway. (Some amount of local music storage might’ve been a good idea — at least until Apple manages to get media companies to agree to the idea of cloud-based iTunes storage.)

While the rental pricing scheme Apple negotiated for movies and TV shows from just two networks isn’t likely to improve Apple’s bottom line, the addition of Netflix streaming is a big deal, and it stands to give the Apple TV a serious presence in many homes. Combined with the price points — HD movies start at $3.99 and HD TV shows go for 99 cents — plus a well-designed interface, and built-in access to YouTube, Flickr and Internet radio, the new Apple TV should become a serious contender against similar offerings, like the one from Roku. With the right marketing, Apple could make this the premier Netflix streaming device.

The AirPlay feature, which is also included in other Apple products, is a good addition, allowing content to be streamed from an iPad or other iOS device directly to the TV. It remains to be seen how stringently Apple will tie this to an iTunes account, which could limit the potential. In an ideal world, I could stream content from my iPhone onto my friend’s Apple TV, but I suspect that level of sharing won’t be supported.

From a different perspective, AirPlay could have some business applications, such as providing a way to wirelessly display presentations and video related to a project without requiring a lot of money to be spent on hardware. Given its small size and footprint — it’s 3.9 in. square and less than an inch high — an iPhone or iPad and an Apple TV could turn into an handy portable training solution.

iTunes 10

Apple may have given iTunes a new icon, but outside of Ping, which I’ll get to in a minute, there isn’t that much new in iTunes. Yes, there’s the hybrid view for seeing album art in a version of list view and there’s AirPlay. But that’s about it.

I want to be more welcoming to the new hybrid view, but the truth is that it isn’t a particularly remarkable addition. I know that I’ll never use it, and I think most people can say the same thing. It’s nice, but better organizational tools and help for people with an iTunes library that can’t fit on their internal hard drive would’ve been far more useful improvements. In fact, as Apple makes iTunes a one-stop source for music, video, podcasts, books, iOS devices and almost everything but the kitchen sink, these are features that need to be added more than anything else.

AirPlay is a significant advance over the existing AirTunes feature. I’ve enjoyed AirTunes at home and on the road, thanks to an AirPort Express. In hotel rooms with great high-definition TV and audio devices, it’s been stellar. Adding video to that is a brilliant move. Now, we just need an AirPort Express with an HDMI or component cable/TOSLink output to make audio/video sharing complete.

Ping

There had been rumors about Apple adding social network integration to iTunes for a while. I wasn’t a fan of automatically populating Facebook and Twitter with iTunes playlists or currently playing songs, and I’m still sick of seeing everyone’s Foursquare updates in my Twitter feed.

For better or worse, that isn’t the route Apple chose. Instead, the company created its own new social network, called Ping, inside iTunes. I really want to like Ping; details about my favorite artists, including information about their favorite songs, videos and concert updates, is a great selling point. Music discovery has its potential, and sharing my opinions about music with friends is kind of cool.

But yet another social network? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube — aren’t the five networks I’m part of already enough? Even if I’m willing to join Ping (and I almost certainly will), how many people are really willing to add to their already overextended social networking lives? Maybe tweens, teens and college students — and possibly retirees, given recent trends — may do so. But most 30-, 40-, and 50-somethings probably don’t have the time, or interest, in another social network, no matter how well designed it is.

Final thoughts

I think Apple has hit the ball out of the park with the new slate of iPods: The iPod Touch will be the de facto device for users who don’t want a smartphone with an expensive and required data plan (yes, AT&T, I’m looking at you), and it will be huge. Likewise, the return to a clippable iPod Shuffle with physical buttons is a great move. And the iPod Nano in a similar form factor with its array of features and multitouch interface is revolutionary.

The new Apple TV could be the knockout that several companies have been trying to come up with as the next-generation set-top box. That kind of success would’ve been assured if Apple had been able to persuade all of the major networks to get behind it and if it had used a subscription model rather than a rental one. The jury is still out on how this one will pan out.

For me, iTunes 10 was a bit of a letdown after all the rumors and speculation, but it is still an evolutionary step forward, with a lot of promises that it may one day fulfill.

All in all, Apple proved once again that it isn’t going to rest on its laurels and that it does listen to its customers. The question now is whether the customers will return the favor.

Ryan Faas is a freelance writer and technology consultant specializing in Mac and multiplatform network issues. He has been a Computerworld columnist since 2003 and is a frequent contributor to Peachpit.com. Ryan was also the co-author of O’Reilly’s Essential Mac OS X Panther Server Administration.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

Note: The Skinny blog is written by Rick Smith, editor and co-founder of Local Tech Wire and business editor of WRAL.com.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – What’s the actual state of Labor this Labor Day weekend? B-A-D, suffice it to say.

The August unemployment rate is an awful 9.6 percent (up 0.1 percent from July), but the overall rate is even more horrible 16.7 percent (up 0.2 percent)?

That second rate counts everyone, not just people who are employed in some way or seeking work. While the “official rate” as described by the government is 9.6 percent as released on Friday, that second number is a much broader measure (U-6 is the term) and receives hardly any media attention.

It should.

Plus, a check of other often overlooked data shows the percentage of people out of work 27 weeks or longer than a year ago by almost 9 percentage points – 42 percent last month compared to 33.6 percent in August 2009. (The percentage at least is down from 44.9 percent in July.)

If you want to really understand how bad the employment situation is., then check the U-6 data as provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which takes into account a much bigger dataset.

“U-6” is found under what the BLS describes as “Alternative measures of labor underutilization.” It is seasonally adjusted.

Here’s the BLS definition of “U-6:”

“U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.”

Here’s the BLS description of the various categories as listed in U-6:

“Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.”

While the government boasts that private sector employment has improved for eight consecutive months, the 16.7 rate is just 0.1 under the 16.8 rate of August 2009. The broader rate is down from a high of 17.1 percent in April, but the August increase is the first in four months.

Check out the data yourself here. It’s not encouraging.

And click here for the duration data chart.

"Tough Times" analysis

For more insight into what’s happening with the economy, check out LTW’s “Tough Times” package published earlier Friday:

Dr. Michael Munger of Duke warns that the U.S. could repeat the 1936 debacle when attempts to escape the Great Depression faltered.

Dr. Michael Walden at NCSU says the economy has “downshifted” and sees “puny growth.”

Dr. James Kleckley of ECU, meanwhile, is concerned about the strength of the recovery but is even more worried about long-term problems, especially in public policy.

Google Wave, the social networking service canceled by Google, will morph into an application bundle for real-time collaboration, a Google engineer said this week.

In a blog post, Google Software Engineer Alex North, from the Google Wave Team, said the company had received many inquiries about the future of the open source code and Wave federation protocol. Citing a lack of adoption, Google Wave was discontinued last month.

[ Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld's Fatal Exception blog and Developer World newsletter. ]

“We will expand upon the 200K lines of code we’ve already open sourced (detailed at waveprotocol.org) to flesh out the existing example Wave server and Web client into a more complete application or “Wave in a Box,” North said.

“This project will not have the full functionality of Google Wave as you know it today. However, we intend to give developers and enterprising users an opportunity to run Wave servers and host Waves on their own hardware,” North said.

The project will feature an application bundle with a server and Web client, supporting real-time collaboration using the same structured conversations as the Google Wave System, North said.

Other capabilities include support for threaded conversations; refinements to client-server protocols; gadget, robot, and data API and support for importing wave data from wave.google.com.

“While Wave in a Box will be a functional application, the future of Wave will be defined by your contributions. We hope this project will help the Wave developer community continue to grow and evolve,” said North.

This article, “Google Wave becomes Wave in a Box,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter.

Read more about developer world in InfoWorld’s Developer World Channel.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

As smartphones get more sophisticated, so does the software that runs them. And that means a major pain in the neck for consumers: buggy software upgrades.

Just like with your computer, smartphone software is constantly evolving and upgrades are rolled out all the time. While new versions of software often add more functionality, sometimes they’re buggy and they break things that worked perfectly well with the previous version of software.

This is a major headache for many smartphone subscribers, especially those who use Android phones. In this week’s Ask Maggie column, I answer one reader who wants to know if a buggy software upgrade is enough to get him out of its two-year cell phone contract with Sprint.

Another reader wants to know how Verizon Wireless can get away with charging so much more for its service than other wireless operators, such as Sprint and T-Mobile USA. And finally, another reader asks why T-Mobile charges subscribers who sign up for a two-year contract and get a subsidized cell phone pay $20 more a month for cell phone service.

Ask Maggie is a weekly advice column that answers readers’ wireless and broadband questions. If you’ve got a question, please send an e-mail to me at maggie dot reardon at cbs dot com. And please put “Ask Maggie” in the subject header.

Can a buggy software upgrade get me out of my contract?

Dear Maggie,

I am a Sprint subscriber using an HTC Hero. In May, Sprint updated my Android software to version 2.1. That update, however, caused significant problems including sluggish performance, the need to regularly reinstall my email account, and, most importantly, the inability to use my car’s Bluetooth. Both Sprint and HTC are aware of these issues and have told me that they will resolve the issues with a future software upgrade.

It has been more than three months since I contacted Sprint and HTC. And there has been neither an update nor an announced release date for an update. The lack of Bluetooth connectivity in my car is a serious issue, and I would like Sprint to replace my phone with a newer Android device. They have refused stating that they’ll only exchange my phone for another Hero that, they acknowledge, will have the same issues.

I still have one year left on my contract. What are my rights and how do I resolve this issue?

Thanks,

R.E.W.

Dear R.E.W,

First of all, you are not the only person who has had these problems. Problems with the Android 2.1 software upgrade on HTC devices have been discussed on several message boards for months. The problems are not universal and they don’t affect every HTC device, but some of the most common problems that people have noted are the following:

Operating system slower and less responsive after upgrade.

Loss of contacts

Frequent browser crashes

Frequent email reboots

I talked to CNET Reviews editor Kent German about what you can do to fix these issues. He suggested resetting the phone to its original factory settings and see what happens. This may work, but it might not. He also said that sometimes, the functionality just fixes itself after awhile.

In terms of the Bluetooth issue, I found a post on an HTC forum from an HTC Hero user who said that he found Bluetooth connectivity with the Hero under the 2.1 update is dependent on the car kit or Bluetooth device used. This particular user had a better connection using a more modern Pioneer head unit rather than older Bluetooh products.

I reached out to Sprint to ask if the company could provide information about when to expect an update or whether it will allow customers to swap out phones. Unfortunately, I did not hear a response to my request.

The issue you are experiencing illustrates a fundamental problem with the whole Android model. Google has developed the Android operating system software, but then phone manufacturers, such as HTC add software to make the operating system work with particular device features, and then wireless operators add their own bit of software so that the device works on their networks. When updates come out, they can be buggy because they haven’t been tested on all the various pieces of hardware on all the various carriers. Some new features may interfere with existing capabilities.

At the end of the day, the customer is left wondering who to contact to fix the bugs and problems. It’s difficult to point fingers when no one is taking responsibility.

So let’s say you have tried to reset your phone and you don’t want to buy new Bluetooth audio gear. What are your options now? I talked to my go-to legal expert Michael Aschenbrener, attorney at the law firm Edelson McGuire in Chicago, about whether you can get out of your cell phone contract. Aschenbrener’s firm has been involved in several class action lawsuits against wireless operators over early termination fees.

Unfortunately, he said that you likely don’t have the right to terminate your contract without paying an early termination fee. The situation you’re going through is not covered by the relevant section of Sprint’s Terms and Conditions, so Sprint probably won’t allow termination without an ETF.

But he said that all is not necessarily lost.

You could qualify as a Sprint Premier customer if your current service plan is at least $69.99 per month. And since you’re a smartphone customer, it’s likely your plan costs at least that per month, unless you are on a very old plan. As a Sprint Premier customer, you are able to upgrade to a new phone every 12 months rather than every two years, he said.

So assuming you are happy with Sprint’s service, you could upgrade to a new device, such as the Evo or the Epic. Both of these phones run Android and have the latest generation hardware components. Of course, you’d still have to pay the subsidized price of the new phone, which is around $200.

You can find more information on Sprint’s Premier plans on its Web site.

I hope that helps and good luck!

How Verizon Wireless gets away with charging more

Hello Maggie,

I have always wondered why in such a competitive market are some wireless services so much less expensive than others? For example, Sprint and T-Mobile USA offer much lower cost plans than AT&T and Verizon Wireless. I find it so surprising that Verizon, in particular, has the most wireless subscribers since they tend to have the highest priced services. How can this be?

Thanks,

Calvin

Dear Calvin,

The reason is simple. Verizon Wireless has the widest footprint in terms of cell phone coverage. And it has typically gotten high marks for its service quality. As a result, the company has been able to charge more for its services, because customers perceive it as offering a superior service.

But that perception could be changing as other carriers make improvements to their networks. T-Mobile is currently rolling out faster 3G service throughout its footprint, which hits most major cities in the U.S. And Sprint is partnering with Clearwire and reselling Clearwire’s 4G wireless broadband service.

As unemployment continues to stay high and people look for ways to cut expenses, wireless subscribers may be looking for better deals on service. And Sprint and T-Mobile may look like tempting replacements. Smaller, regional carriers that offer prepaid service, such as MetroPCS and Cricket, may also offer low-cost alternatives for some consumers.

It will be interesting to see how Verizon reacts as T-Mobile and Sprint improve their networks and regional operators add more cool phones to their prepaid line-ups.

Verizon is also preparing to roll out its own 4G wireless network. And because of the wireless spectrum it uses, it will likely continue to have better coverage than its competitors.

The company is also starting to embrace the prepaid market. On Thursday, it announced new prepaid data plans for smartphones and feature phones. Unfortunately for consumers, it doesn’t look like Verizon took the opportunity to provide consumers with a better deal by going prepaid. The 3G prepaid data package offers $30-a-month unlimited plans for smartphone users and $10 a month for 25MB of data for feature phone users. The company will charge 20 cents per megabyte if users go over that limit.

The company’s announcement didn’t mention anything about text messaging, so that is an additional charge, and subscribers must still sign up for voice service. It looks like the service is more for people looking to avoid a contract rather than people looking to save a buck or two on their monthly service.

Deciphering T-Mobile’s data plans

Dear Maggie,

I recently was looking for a new cell phone carrier, and while looking, something struck me as odd with T-Mobile’s cell phone plans. If you sign a contract and pick a smartphone, you have to spend $20 a month more for the required data plan than you would if you pay for the phone and not sign a contract. On the “Cell Phone Plans” page, it sounds like you pay more because of the discount you get for the phone when you sign a contract. However, didn’t all the carriers state the early termination fee was to cover the discount?

I’ve already chosen another carrier for other reasons, but I still hope you could clear up my confusion.

Brian

Dear Brian,

The early termination fee that carriers charge covers the cost of the phone subsidy if you leave your contract early. If you don’t cancel your contract, the carrier makes up the subsidy through your monthly service charges over the life of your contract. If, for example, you get the T-Mobile MyTouch with a two-year contract, you’d pay $180 for the phone. The actual retail price of the phone is $430. This means that T-Mobile is subsidizing the cost of the phone by $250.

In order to recoup the cost of the subsidy, T-Mobile needs to charge you at least $10.41 over 24 months to get the $250 back on the phone. There are also likely other additional costs associated with footing the bill for the subsidy. But the fact that the company is actually charging $20 extra per month for service plans for people with subsidized phones suggests that T-Mobile is also making a bigger profit on the subsidized customer.

What’s interesting is that T-Mobile is the only wireless operator to actually give consumers who buy their phones without a subsidy a break on their monthly service charge. Customers who buy their phones at full price from other carriers still pay the same monthly service charge as those who got a subsidy for their phones.

Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie.

International cyberwar would be “worse than a tsunami” and should be averted by a global cybersecurity peace treaty, according to the head of the International Telecommunications Union.

Hamadoun Tour, who has been secretary-general of the UN agency since 1999 and is up for reelection in a few weeks’ time, has targeted cybersecurity issues in his electoral pledges. Speaking at a London roundtable on Thursday, he said he had proposed such a treaty this year, but it had met “a lot of resistance” from industrialized nations.

“My dream, I said in Davos this year, is that I would like to have a cyber peace treaty,” Tour said. “Some people think it’s a sin. People who think they are secure don’t want anyone else to talk about it. I say there is no [online] superpower.” “We need to avoid a cyberwar starting. After the cases of Estonia and Georgia, you need to realize how fragile the world is becoming. A cyberwar will be worse than a tsunami — we have to avoid it,” he added.

For more on this story, read ITU head: Cyberwar could be ‘worse than tsunami’ on ZDNet UK.

The long-troubled — and previously aborted — development of Duke Nukem Forever is getting a new life, as 2K Games revealed Friday morning at PAX that the game is not only in development but is playable on the show floor.

The game’s coming to the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC for 2011. Gearbox Software is finishing development. GamePro is checking out the game later today — check back this afternoon for a preview.

“I can’t believe it, either,” said Gearbox Software CEO and President Randy Pitchford in the livestream showing off the game. ” You guys [the crowd at PAX] are among the first people in the world to play it.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s totally real. We can’t let the Duke die.”

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

The U.S. and Canadian governments this week said that Toshiba is voluntarily recalling some Satellite laptops for posing a burn hazard to customers.

Laptops could overheat and possibly melt the area around the notebook’s plug-in to the AC adapter, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada said in a joint statement.

The burn hazard results from a faulty component. Laptops being voluntarily recalled include the Satellite T135, Satellite T135D and Satellite Pro T130 models. The model and part numbers are located on the bottom of the laptops, and begin with PST3AU, PST3BU, or PST3LU, according to Toshiba’s support Web site

The laptops were sold in stores and through online retailers, including Toshiba’s Web site, from August 2009 through August 2010 for between US$600 and $800.

The hazard affects about 41,000 laptops worldwide. Toshiba has received 129 reports of either overheating or of plastic casing melting around the AC adapter plug, the CPSC and HC said. The reports included minor burn injuries and property damage.

Toshiba has released BIOS revisions for the laptops that can disable external power after failure. Toshiba said batteries cannot be recharged until the problem is fixed. Toshiba has asked customers to call the company’s product support line for repairs.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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Orange claims to have introduced technology that will lead to the end of distorted and crackling mobile phone calls. The company’s high definition (HD) voice service is being offered to 3G customers of the France Telecom-owned mobile operator.

The move follows a survey in which 75 percent of mobile phone users said that call quality was the most important feature of their device, Orange said that the new technology would help mobile phone users handle calls in the noisiest environments.

The technology will mean that mobile users will be able to pick up nuances in callers’ voices, something that is not always possible with conventional mobile telephony.

Martin Stiven, VP of Business at Everything Everywhere, the company which runs Orange UK, said: “HD Voice is going to change the way businesses are able to communicate through our mobiles from conducting calls in places that were not previously possible to the ability to hear emotions in people’s voices. People are going to love the clarity of calls and the lack of background noise.”

The Orange HD Voice system uses a different voice codec to standard mobile calls. It uses a wider range of bandwith – 70 to 7000Hz – compared to the narrower 300 to 3400Hz used by conventional mobile telephony.

At the moment, Orange HD is confined to just two models, Nokia E5 and the Samsung Omnia Pro 5230, although the company has said that further models will be introduced in the coming months.

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