A Real threat

HAPPENINGS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

RealPlayer is definitely having a bad season. The company has been issuing security patches all this year for various flaws in its Gold version, the latest being in June.

Another flaw has been discovered in RealNetworks' RealPlayer version 10.0.5.756 Gold and Helix Player 1.0.5.757 Gold running on Linux or Unix operating systems, according to a report released by the French Security Incident Response Team (FrSIRT).

The RealNetworks products are vulnerable because of a format string error that occurs when a malformed .rp or .rt file is clicked and players are launched. Attackers can take advantage of the error to take remote control of users' computer systems. The company has yet to issue a security update for this programming glitch.

King-size gaffe

Gaming buffs, especially those who love Madden King, were in for a surprise recently. In a new version of Electronic Arts' bestselling American football game, New York Jets lineman Michael King appears as a 7-inch-tall player.

A Madden producer said that the bug was the result of a typo in the spreadsheet that lists player attributes such as weight, height and team affiliation. The producer explained that the spreadsheet is designed to accept players' heights in inches, and therefore, expects a two-digit entry. Here, King's height was entered as "727" by mistake.

For the system, that meant that King was 7 inches tall. The player is almost invisible "" unless you go into the replay mode. The game producer said that the update was released on September 16 and the bug was quickly discovered. It took about three-four days to fix the problem and anyone downloading the game today will get a normal-size King at 6 foot 3.

Books and mortar

Online sales of general-interest second-hand books is growing at 30 per cent a year while the sales of such books in the brick and mortar stores is flat. That finding is part of research conducted by America's Book Industry Study Group comprising representatives of commercial publishing companies as well as libraries.

The study says that today online book sales account for two-thirds of the market for second-hand books for general interest reading. The market for such books is not more than $600 million in the US, though Americans spend more on second-hand textbooks. It is estimated to be 30 per cent of the $5.3 billion spent on educational and professional books.

The Book Industry Study Group's findings are based on data related to book sales on large online sites such as Amazon and eBay. The information was also collated from other sources that track sales of college books.

The research did not include sale of second-hand books at branded retail chains such as Barnes & Noble, for instance.

Interestingly, publishing companies and authors worry about the growing circulation of second-hand books in the market as they believe it affects the sales of new books and, therefore, their royalties and revenues.

However, another research paper released some months ago argues that since second-hand books come cheap, it leaves more money in consumers' pockets to buy more new books.

New role for Renee

Renee Zellweger will play Beatrix Potter in a film on the famous children's author, according to reports on the Net. Her love interest in the movie, Norman Warne will be Star Wars star Ewan McGregor.

The movie casts Beatrix Potter, the author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, as a strong woman and follows her struggle for independence in Victorian England.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit was initially rejected by six publishers and when it came out in 1902 it became an overnight success.