Sony’s PlayStation 4 could lose to the next Xbox before it’s even released

I love all game consoles equally. My Xbox 360 is used equally as much as my PlayStation 3. The Wii — oh, I’ll just leave it at that. The current generation of consoles is all but over — 10-year life cycle be damned — and new consoles are rumored to be coming next fall. If not next fall, then in 2014. Whatever is the case, Sony (SNE) can’t afford to lag in third place again. Sure, the Xbox 360 and PS3 are neck-in-neck in global lifetime sales, and the Xbox 360 did have a one year head start, but coming off the disappointing PS Vita, “confidence is less high” that Sony will deliver a console next year in time to compete with Microsoft (MSFT), according to Kotaku.

[More from BGR: Has the iPhone peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S seen outselling iPhone 5]

I want a new console just as much as any other gamer. There’s a reason people are still pouncing on those Wii U consoles and flipping them on eBay. Six years is unusually long for a console to still be kicking around.

[More from BGR: Apple execs said to be ‘seething’ over Google Maps praise]

According to the well-informed Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku, the game blog that first broke news on the next-gen Xbox, Microsoft’s “Durango” is ”on the mark” and “Sony appears to inspire less confidence…due to the on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3 and the struggles of the Vita vs. how much lost confidence is due to any problems looming for PS4.“

Totilo says “confidence is high that the next Xbox will be out in time for next Christmas” and confidence is low that the PS4 will be right there on store shelves next to it.

The “on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3″ Totilo is referring to is the anchor that’s weighed the console down since launch: tougher development due to the Cell processor and less available RAM – 256MB vs. 512MB in the Xbox 360.

In the months before the PS3′s launch in 2006, Sony said the console would be the most powerful console ever created, and here we are six years later and multi-platform games on the console consistently end up being buggier and uglier than on the Xbox 360 in many cases. Cases in point: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Sony’s in a rut right now. It has the chops to build beautiful and powerful hardware that’s a developer’s dream (ex: PS Vita), but at the same time, it’s always launching after the competition nowadays.

If Sony’s learned any lessons in the last half a decade, it better apply them to the PS4. The console needs to offer next-level processing and graphics. It needs to be backward-compatible with PS3 games and play Blu-ray discs. It should be small and quiet. It should have a strong online platform, support a greater array of apps and most importantly be easy for developers to program for.

Game exclusives will always be important, but now that games are million-dollar productions, multi-platform will be where developers hope to reap back their costs.

With Microsoft said to be preparing an “Xbox 720″ and an “Xbox Lite,” Sony can’t make the mistake of launching late or pricing the console too high. A launch in spring of 2014 would mean Sony will miss Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two biggest shopping days of the year that bring in massive sales.  Ceding sales and market share to Microsoft and Nintendo by launching late would be disastrous.

The PS3 screwed up too many times. At this point, the PS4 needs to be perfect out of the door.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Adam Lanza Identified as Gunman in Connecticut Shooting

By Stephen M. Silverman

12/14/2012 at 05:30 PM EST

Woman speaking with state police at the scene

Cloe Poisson/Hartford Courant/MCT/Getty

As authorities continue to investigate Friday's horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., details are beginning to emerge about the alleged gunman.

A law enforcement official tells the Associated Press that the shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the son of a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which is a K-4 school.

A second law enforcement official says the man's mother, Nancy Lanza, was a kindergarten teacher and is presumed dead.

Although Lanza wasn't named during a Friday afternoon press conference, Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance told reporters, "The shooter is deceased inside the building."

Vance put the death toll at 28 total: 20 children, six adults, the gunman and a deceased adult at a secondary location.

There are reports that the deceased adult at a secondary location was a family member found in the Lanza family home in Newtown. No further details are available.

According to reports, the alleged shooter, armed with three weapons and wearing a bullet-proof vest, entered the grade school Friday morning. He reportedly began shooting in the principal's office, then went to the kindergarten class, where he opened fire.

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Study: People worldwide living longer, but sicker

LONDON (AP) — Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health threats.

The last comprehensive study was in 1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 — more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of children dying to about 7 million.

Malnutrition was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.

With more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by smoking and alcohol.

"The biggest contributor to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

In developed countries, such conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.

The research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As in 1990, Japan topped the life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.

The research found wide variations in what's killing people around the world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the researchers: — Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.

— While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt," from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in Western Europe.

— In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).

— Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the rate is about 3 per 100,000.

Globally, heart disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the sixth leading cause two decades later.

While chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting too much of the focus away from those ailments.

"It's the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.

Still, she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a good model for chronic care," she said.

Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.

"We have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said the information in some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all the relevant health risk factors.

"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.

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Online:

www.lancet.com

http://healthmetricsandevaluation.org

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S&P 500 ends six days of gains on "cliff" worries

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 ended its six-day winning streak on Thursday, retreating as worries intensified that Washington's "fiscal cliff" negotiations were dragging on with little progress.

Anxiety about the drawn-out talks between Democrats and Republicans was enough to offset encouraging data on retail sales and jobless claims on Thursday.

There is concern that tax hikes and spending cuts, set to begin in 2013 if a deal is not reached in Washington, will hurt growth. The stock market has taken the heated rhetoric in stride of late, but downbeat remarks from Republican House Speaker John Boehner prompted some selling on Thursday.

Boehner accused President Barack Obama of "slow walking" the economy off the fiscal cliff. He is scheduled to meet with Obama later on Thursday.

"There is no conviction here and Boehner's comments - as harsh as they were - were realistic," said Jason Weisberg, managing director at Seaport Securities Corp., in New York.

"The fiscal cliff is already built in. That being said, people don't like to be told the apocalypse is coming over and over and over again. The real players in this market have already closed their books."

After coming close to a 1 percent decline for the day, the S&P 500 pared losses late in the session. The index had posted six straight sessions of gains through Wednesday's close, and at one point on Wednesday, the S&P touched its highest intraday level since October 22.

While the Federal Reserve's announcement on Wednesday of a new round of economic stimulus bolstered stocks, Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments that monetary policy would not be sufficient to offset the impact of the fiscal cliff weighed on sentiment.

Apple's stock , down 1.7 percent at $529.69, was among the biggest drags on the Nasdaq in Thursday's session, while International Business Machines , down 0.5 percent at $191.99, was among the biggest weights on the Dow. A U.S. jury found that Apple's iPhone infringed three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas.

Among the day's biggest gainers, Best Buy Co shares shot up 15.9 percent to $14.12 after a report that the company's founder is expected to offer to buy the consumer electronics retailer by the end of the week.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> tumbled 74.73 points, or 0.56 percent, to 13,170.72 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 9.03 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,419.45. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> slid 21.65 points, or 0.72 percent, to end at 2,992.16.

Energy and information technology sectors were the S&P 500's weakest performers, with the S&P energy index <.gspe> down 0.9 percent.

In the energy sector, shares of Nabors Industries Ltd dropped 4.7 percent to $13.85 after Jefferies cut the drilling company's rating. Shares of U.S. refining company Phillips 66 lost 1.6 percent to $52.21.

The day's economic data sent some positive signals on the economy, with weekly claims for jobless benefits dropping to nearly the lowest level since February 2008, and retail sales rising in November after an October decline, improving the picture for consumer spending.

In Europe, European Union finance ministers reached agreement to make the European Central Bank the bloc's top banking supervisor, which could boost confidence in EU leaders' ability to confront the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis.

Volume was roughly 6.11 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.52 billion.

Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a ratio of about 7 to 3, and on the Nasdaq, more than five stocks fell for every three that rose.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Jan Paschal)

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Rice Drops Bid for Secretary of State, Citing Opposition

WASHINGTON — Susan E. Rice, the Obama administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, has withdrawn her name from consideration for secretary of state, in the face of relentless opposition from Republicans in Congress over her role in the aftermath of the deadly attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya.

In a letter to President Obama, Ms. Rice said she concluded that “the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly — to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities. The tradeoff is simply not worth it to our country.”

Mr. Obama, who spoke with Ms. Rice on Thursday, said he accepted her request with regret, describing her as “an extraordinarily capable, patriotic, and passionate public servant.”

He said she “will continue to serve as our ambassador at the United Nations and a key member of my cabinet and national security team.”

“While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in recent weeks, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character, and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment to put our national interests first,” Mr. Obama’s statement said.

The president had steadfastly defended Ms. Rice from attacks that she misled the American public in televised appearances after the attack in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. And until Thursday, Mr. Obama seemed ready to face down Ms. Rice’s critics on Capitol Hill.

The most vociferous of them was Senator John McCain of Arizona, but several other Republicans had joined in sharply questioning her suitability for the job.

One defender, Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is often mentioned as another candidate to become secretary of state, was among the first on Thursday to issue a statement reacting to Ms. Rice’s withdrawal.

“I’ve defended her publicly and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again because I know her character and I know her commitment,” Mr. Kerry said. “She’s an extraordinarily capable and dedicated public servant. Today’s announcement doesn’t change any of that. We should all be grateful that she will continue to serve and contribute at the highest level.

“As someone who has weathered my share of political attacks and understands on a personal level just how difficult politics can be, I’ve felt for her throughout these last difficult weeks, but I also know that she will continue to serve with great passion and distinction,” he added.

The debate over Ms. Rice had been a significant distraction during the Obama administration’s transition between its first and second terms, as many changes in top positions are expected, and difficult negotiations over resolving the nation’s fiscal crisis are dominating the domestic agenda.

It was unusual for so much attention to be focused on a potential nominee to a cabinet post before any selection had been announced, and for the administration to put on a full-court press on behalf of the contender.

And it was unorthodox, too, for her to be sent to Capitol Hill to defend herself in meetings with her critics, who only extended and even broadened their attack on her credentials.

Some officials said they feared that Mr. Obama was limiting his own maneuvering room by engaging the critics so vehemently.

“For them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation, is outrageous,” the president said at a news conference shortly after the election.

“When they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me,” he continued. “And should I choose — if I think that she would be the best person to serve America in the capacity — the State Department, then I will nominate her.”

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Verizon Offering $5 Shared 4G Plan for Samsung Galaxy Camera

Imagine the powerful Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone, except that it can’t make phone calls and its backplate has been replaced by a digital camera — handgrip, zoom lens, and all. That’s basically the Samsung Galaxy Camera in a nutshell, and whether it’s a small, awkwardly-shaped Android tablet or a digital camera that you can play Modern Combat 3 on depends on how you look at it.

When the Galaxy Camera launched last month, it was only available in white, and cost $ 499 on AT&T’s network with a month-to-month data plan. But on Dec. 13, it launches on Verizon’s network, in both white and black. The Verizon Galaxy Camera costs $ 50 more up front, but in return it has 4G LTE instead of HSPA+, and Verizon is offering a “promotional price” for the monthly charge: Only $ 5 to add it to a Share Everything plan, instead of the usual $ 10 tablet rate.

A 4G digital camera

While it’s capable of functioning as an Android tablet (or game machine), the biggest reason for the Samsung Galaxy Camera’s 4G wireless Internet is so it can automatically upload photos it takes. Apps such as Dropbox, Photobucket, and Ubuntu One offer a limited amount of online storage space for free, where the Galaxy Camera can save photos without anyone needing to tell it to. Those photos can then be accessed at home, or on a tablet or laptop.

Most smartphones are able to do this already, but few (with the possible exception of the Windows Phone powered Nokia Lumia 920) are able to take photos as high-quality as the Galaxy Camera’s.

Not as good of a deal as it sounds

Dropbox is offering two years’ worth of 50 GB of free online storage space for photos and videos, to anyone who buys a Samsung Galaxy Camera from AT&T or Verizon. (The regular free plan is only 2 GB.)

The problem is, you may need that much space. The photos taken by the Galaxy Camera’s 16 megapixel sensor take up a lot more space, at maximum resolution, than ordinary smartphone snapshots do. Those camera uploads can eat through a shared data plan, and with Verizon charging a $ 15 per GB overage fee (plus the $ 50 extra up-front on top of what AT&T charges) it may make up for the cheaper monthly cost.

On top of that, the Galaxy Camera’s photos are basically on par with a $ 199 digital camera’s — you pay a large premium to combine that kind of point-and-shoot with the hardware equivalent of a high-end smartphone.

It does run Android, though, right?

The Galaxy Camera uses Samsung‘s custom software for its camera app, and lacks a normal phone dialer app. Beyond that, though, it runs the same Android operating system found on smartphones, and can run all the same games and apps.

Some apps don’t work the same on the Galaxy Camera as they do on a smartphone, however. Apps which only run in portrait mode, for instance, require you to hold the camera sideways to use them (especially unpleasant when they’re camera apps). And while it can make voice and even video calls over Skype, it lacks a rear-facing camera or the kind of speaker you hold up close to your ear. So you may end up making speakerphone calls and filming the palm of your hand.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Heather Dubrow Guest Stars with Reba McEntire on Malibu Country

TV Watch

12/13/2012 at 05:30 PM EST

From left: Sara Rue, Reba McEntire and Heather Dubrow

Nicole Wilder/ABC

She's gone country! Malibu Country, that is.

Real Housewives of Orange County star Heather Dubrow, who also goes by Heather Paige Kent, has landed a guest-starring role on Reba McEntire's ABC sitcom.

In the episode, Dubrow plays Brooke, a friend of Reba's neighbor Kim Sallinger (Sara Rue).

"Reba finds herself in a bit of a pickle when she says some unkind things about Kim – not knowing that the camera is rolling – and tries to pin the blame on Kim's friend Brooke," reads a press release from ABC.

The episode of Malibu Country, which airs Fridays (8:30 p.m. ET), is expected to air in January.

The show also stars Lily Tomlin as Reba's medicinal marijuana-using mother, Lille Mae MacKenzie.

Reba McEntire and Heather Dubrow

Nicole Wilder / ABC

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Congress examines science behind HGH test for NFL

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional committee has opened a hearing to examine the science behind a human growth hormone test the NFL wants to start using on its players.

Nearly two full seasons have passed since the league and the players' union signed a labor deal that set the stage for HGH testing.

The NFL Players Association won't concede the validity of a test that's used by Olympic sports and Major League Baseball, and the sides haven't been able to agree on a scientist to help resolve that impasse.

Among the witnesses before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday is Pro Football Hall of Fame member Dick Butkus. In his prepared statement, Butkus writes: "Now, let's get on with it. The HGH testing process is proven to be reliable."

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Wall Street ends almost flat as Bernanke warns on "cliff"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended nearly flat on Wednesday, giving up most of the day's gains after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke reiterated that monetary policy won't be enough to offset damage from the "fiscal cliff."

His comments followed the Federal Reserve's announcement of a new stimulus plan, which briefly pushed the S&P 500 to a seven-week high.

The plan, the latest attempt to boost the country's struggling economy, will replace a more modest program set to expire with a fresh round of Treasury purchases that will increase its balance sheet. The program is known as "quantitative easing" or QE.

In comments after the announcement, Bernanke said he hopes that markets won't have to tank to get a fiscal cliff deal.

"Initially the addition of QE was certainly favorable. I think, though, in the press conference, what came out is that there still seems to be a level of uncertainty with regard to the exit strategy (and) the efficacy of the current policy," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

Bernanke "reiterated the fact that monetary policy has its hands tied as far as addressing the seriousness of going over the fiscal cliff," Hellwig added.

The S&P financial sector index <.gspf>, which had been up more than 1 percent after the Fed's announcement, ended up just 0.5 percent.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc's stock was the biggest drag on the Dow, falling 2.8 percent to $68.94 following the Indian government's announcement of an inquiry into the company's lobbying practices.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 2.99 points, or 0.02 percent, to 13,245.45 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> inched up just 0.64 of a point, or 0.04 percent, to 1,428.48. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> shed 8.49 points, or 0.28 percent, to end at 3,013.81.

Though the S&P 500 ended up just slightly, it was the sixth day of gains for the index - its longest winning streak since August.

The central bank committed to monthly purchases of $45 billion in Treasuries on top of the $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed bonds it started buying in September. It also said it will keep its near-zero interest-rate program in place until the U.S. unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent from its current 7.7 percent.

"The actions by the Fed were more aggressive than investors anticipated," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.

"The asset-purchasing program is probably larger and more comprehensive than some might have thought."

Negotiations over plans to avoid the fiscal cliff intensified in Washington, but U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Wednesday that "serious differences" remain with President Barack Obama in their talks. If no agreement is reached, steep tax hikes and budget cuts will fall into place early next year.

Shares of Aetna , the third-largest U.S. health insurer, gained 3.2 percent to $45.91, a day after the company gave a higher forecast for profit and revenue growth in 2013.

Volume was roughly 6.58 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.52 billion.

Decliners slightly outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by about 16 to 15, and on the Nasdaq, by about 3 to 2.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Leah Schnurr Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Ravi Shankar, Sitarist Who Introduced Indian Music to the West, Dies at 92

Associated Press

The Beatles' George Harrison with Ravi Shankar in 1967.

Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitarist and composer whose collaborations with Western classical musicians as well as the Beatles and other rock stars helped foster a worldwide appreciation of India’s traditional music, died on Tuesday in San Diego. He was 92.

Mr. Shankar died in a hospital near his home, his family said in a statement, adding that he had suffered from upper respiratory and heart ailments in the last year and underwent heart-valve replacement surgery last Thursday.

Mr. Shankar, a soft-spoken, eloquent man whose virtuosity transcended musical languages, was trained in both Eastern and Western musical traditions. Although Western audiences were often mystified by the odd sounds and shapes of the instruments when he began touring in Europe and the United States in the early 1950s, Mr. Shankar and his ensemble gradually built a large following for Indian music.

Mr. Shankar collaborated with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, and was a mentor to the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. But Western interest in his instrument, the sitar, exploded in 1965 when George Harrison of the Beatles encountered one on the set of “Help!,” the Beatles’ second film.

Harrison was intrigued by the instrument, with its small rounded body, long neck and resonating gourd at the top, and its complexity: it has 6 melody strings and 25 sympathetic strings, which are not played but which resonate freely as the other strings are plucked. He soon learned its rudiments and used it that year on a Beatles recording, “Norwegian Wood.”

The Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Byrds and other rock groups quickly followed suit, although few went as far as Harrison, who recorded several songs on Beatles albums with Indian musicians rather than with his band mates. By the summer of 1967 the sitar was in vogue in the rock world.

At first Mr. Shankar reveled in the attention his connection with popular culture brought him, and he performed for huge audiences at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and at Woodstock in 1969. He also performed, with the tabla virtuoso Alla Rakha and the sarod player Ali Akbar Khan, at an all-star concert at Madison Square Garden in 1971 that Harrison organized to help Mr. Shankar raise money for the victims of political upheaval in Bangladesh.

Last week Mr. Shankar was told that he would receive a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in February, said Neil Portnow, the head of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

In addition to his frequent tours as a sitarist, Mr. Shankar, the father of the singer Norah Jones and the sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, was a prolific composer of film music (including the score for Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” in 1982), ballets, electronic works and concertos for sitar and Western orchestras.

In 1988 his seven-movement “Swar Milan” was performed at the Palace of Culture in Moscow by an ensemble of 140 musicians, including the Russian Folk Ensemble, members of the Moscow Philharmonic and the Ministry of Culture Chorus, as well as Mr. Shankar’s own group of Indian musicians. And in 1990 he collaborated with the Minimalist composer Philip Glass — who had worked as his assistant on the film score for “Chappaqua” in the late 1960s — on “Passages,” a recording of works he and Mr. Glass composed for each other.

“I have always had an instinct for doing new things,” Mr. Shankar said in 1985. “Call it good or bad, I love to experiment.”

But he came to regard his participation in rock festivals as a mistake, saying he deplored the use of his music, which has its roots in an ancient spiritual tradition, as a backdrop for drug taking.

“On one hand,” he said in a 1985 interview, “I was lucky to have been there at a time when society was changing. And although much of the hippie movement seemed superficial, there was also a lot of sincerity in it, and a tremendous amount of energy. What disturbed me, though, was the use of drugs and the mixing of drugs with our music. And I was hurt by the idea that our classical music was treated as a fad — something that is very common in Western countries.

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