EA and BioWare's MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic launched in late-2011 to surprisingly strong numbers, but EA have released an earnings report today that might shock you. EA have announced that the game currently has 1.3 million subscribers, which is down roughly 25-percent from its peak of 1.7 million subscribers in March.

During a conference call that went with the earnings report, EA Labels President Frank Gibeau said that the subscriber drop was within the company's "original assumptions" about how the game would go post-launch. He added that the company "intends to increase subscribers" with continual upgrades, which include new guild features, players vs. player improvements, and "elder gameplay" that keeps SW:TOR appealing to high-level players.

Gibeau has said that the subscriber drop isn't from the "core MMO users", as they are sticking to the game in good numbers, but seems to be coming from the expanded audience of non-MMO-obsessed Star Wars fans attracted by a title like The Old Republic. Gibeau continues:

Lenovo are planning big investments in China over the next 18 or so months, where they'll be investing $800 million in a new mobile products plant in Wuhan, one of the largest cities in China. The Lenovo Industrial Base will cover research & development, production and sales of smartphones and tablets, with a target opening date of October 2013.

The new plant will service both local and global markets, and is expected to generate around $1.5 billion in revenue by 2014, and the company are hoping to hit $8 billion within five years. Job creation numbers are great, with around 10,000 jobs created over the coming years thanks to the new Wuhan facility.

Lenovo are wanting to grab more mobile market share, and this move will surely help them do so. Lenovo have said in their press release that they are already a top-three smartphone maker in China. Lenovo's K800 smartphone was one of the first devices to feature Intel's Medfield-based processor, which should be the start of something new for Lenovo. On top of this, they're preparing the IdeaTab S2109 with an unspecified processor, a 9.7-inch display, and 1GB of RAM.

Minnesota Senator Al Franken believes that Comcast is breaking its net neutrality agreement that it had to sign to gain approval to merge with NBC Universal. The fear that Franken has resides in the fact that Comcast will not count any direct-to-Xbox streaming against customers' 250GB monthly data cap.

Obviously, Netflix and other internet video providers are upset by this and see it as unfair. They believe it gives Comcast's service an unfair advantage to their own services and that it violates the Net neutrality rules that they had to sign to. These rules prohibit broadband providers from favoring their own content on the open internet over that of their competitors.

But of course, Comcast believes that they are complying and actually exceeding the requirements:

Rumors about upcoming Apple products are often some of the most interesting and fun as Apple products are often shrouded in security and hard to pin down any detail. As such, many rumors pop up that aren't true but sound reasonable. This rumor could very well fit into this category, or it could end up being true.

It's important to note that the picture above is a mock-up and not an actual photo of the upcoming MacBook Pro 2012. The rumor we are dealing with today says that Apple will be ditching the optical drive in the next iteration of the MacBook Pro. As Apple has proven the CD-less model works using the MacBook Air, this isn't out of the realm of possibility.

Ditching the optical drive will leave a gaping hole in the chassis, so one might think that the case will get a size reduction similar to the Air. The rumor states that this is wrong and that instead the MacBook Pro will be getting a larger battery along with a second drive. The two drive system would provide one SSD for boot only and a standard HDD for everything else.

Ah, yes, that legal battle between Oracle and Google is still going on. In fact, it's only in its first stages. The copyright phase of the trial ended Friday with the jury stating they couldn't reach a unanimous decision on one of the four questions it needed to. Judge Alsup told the jurors to think about it over the weekend.

Unfortunately, this did not help as the jury as it told the court that an "impasse has been reached." The jury then turned in its partial verdict on the three questions that they were able to agree upon. The jury has found that Google did in fact infringe on Oracle's copyrights by copying the structure, sequence, and organization of the code.

They were unable to decide if this use would be covered by fair use. The jury found that Google had not unfairly taken from the documentation associated with the 37 APIs. The jury found Google guilty of infringing by actually copying some specific code from the Java programming language. They were only found guilty on one of the three they were charged with.

Once again, I get to be the bearer of bad news in order to keep you, our reader, safe. This time I bring news of a new malware that is going around dubbed "ransomware" due to the fact it locks up your computer until you pay the ransom amount demanded. This isn't a completely new idea, but this is a new strain and variation.

This latest campaign is mainly targeting the UK and a few other European countries and claims that illegally downloaded music has been found on the computer. Due to this illegal material, the malware claims that "to unlock your computer and to avoid other legal consequences, your are obligated to pay a release fee of 50 pounds."

The malware was spotted by security watch blog abuse.ch. According to them, the malware is delivered through an exploit known as "Blackhole." The ransomware also carries a payload of Aldi Bot which steals banking information. The message to take away here is to keep all your browsers and their add-ons up to date, as this is how Blackhole functions. Anti-virus isn't a bad idea either.

As the war between smartphones and smartphone operating systems wages on, Android marched forward and taken back some ground. Over quarter 4 of last year, Android sales dropped from 61% in Q3 to 49% in Q4 as Apple iPhone sales jumped from 25% to 41% over demand for the 4S. Android has returned to being 61% of all smartphone sales during Q1 2012.

Of course, as one group goes up, others must go down. In this case, Apple has declined from 41% down to only 29%. iOS and Android combined make up 90% of US smartphone sales. Overall, however, smartphones have failed to increase as a portion of overall phone sales. They remain pegged at 66% of all handset sales.

Two out of three people aged 25-34 own a smartphone. Distribution between men and women are generally in a dead heat at around 50%. Android is top in the United States with around 49% market share for last quarter. Apple only has 32% during the same quarter, yet it remains the top smartphone maker.

Android tablets are a dime a dozen nowadays, so something really needs to set new ones off from the competition. Today sees the release of yet another Android tablet, this one made by Ematic. In this case, it would seem that price would be the factor that sets this tablet off from the rest. Retailing for a slim $219.99, you still get loads of features that more expensive tablets offer.

The eGlide XL Pro 2 may have a slightly long and unwieldy name, but it is generally fitting for the long and unwieldy list of features. The tablet features a 10-inch touchscreen and comes preloaded with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The processor is a multi-core 1GHz beast and also features a 400MHz graphics processor.

"We're thrilled to launch the eGlide XL Pro 2, and add it to our expanding line of tablets which suit various needs and lifestyles," says Roy Rayn, General Manager of Ematic. "This tablet incorporates everything our consumers love about Ematic products: durability, productivity and affordability."

This year, so far, has not exactly been a stunning display for Macs. Between the Flashback malware and now this, it really shows just how weak the security of Mac OSX is. The latest blunder by Apple and its security team is that they turned on a debug log file which stores the user's password outside of the encrypted area.

If you were using FileVault prior to upgrading to Lion, it may be time to think about changing your passwords as this would affect you. FileValut 2 users (whole drive encryption) are not affected by this accident. Additionally, if you have Time Machine backups, the plaintext log file has stored your password for the long term.

Security researcher David Emery explains:

If we were to go off of the patent pictured below, it looks as though Apple haver finally found the perfect way to solve the issue with touchscreen keyboards discarding the physical keyboard in favor of this new technology.

Haptic technology would allow touchscreen manufacturers to deliver physical feedback when a user touches a button, tries to type on the devices on-screen keyboard, or just interacts in general with the screen. No physical keyboard plus haptic technology could be the perfect middle ground.

The current haptics on most smartphones are nothing but a quick vibration, and not a full solution. Apple's way seems to use a combination of flexible OLED display technology and piezoelectric actuators that would, wait for it, actually alter the contour of your screen. This technology would take into account sensor data to determine usage context, providing situationally-appropriate feedback.