| Latest Headlines & Updates |
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UK Bans Playstation "Chipping" |
Added 23/07/04 |
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The selling of
"mod chips" for Sony PlayStation 2 game consoles has been ruled
illegal by a UK high court. A PlayStation 2 with a modified chip
installed can play imported or pirated copies of the console's video
games.
Mr Justice Laddie backed Sony's legal argument that its intellectual
property was being infringed by people selling the chips to console
owners. The ruling is thought to be one of the first brought under a
controversial European Union directive on copyright.
Sony brought its case against a man called David Ball who was
accused of selling about 1,500 "Messiah" mod chips. In the
High Court, Mr Justice Laddie ruled that Mr Ball was acting
illegally in selling the chips which get around the built-in copy
protection system on Sony's console.
As well as declaring the sale of the mod chips illegal, Mr Laddie
said that the use, advertising or possession of them for commercial
purposes should be considered illegal too. |
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 Source :
BBC |
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Toshiba to Introduce Quick-Start Multimedia Laptop |
Added 23/07/04 |
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Toshiba is
brining out a new line of laptops today (Qosmio). This breed of
multimedia laptops can play and digitally record TV programs, DVDs
and other video and audio material from the Internet. One of the
most unique features is the amount of time it takes to access its
multimedia functions. For example it only takes 5 seconds to turn on
a built-in analog TV turner, or a DVD player. No doubt Toshiba is
hoping that the unique features its Qosmio lineup brings will make
its products stand out from the rest.
Japan's Toshiba Corp. is launching its first multimedia laptop with
a much clearer display and quick-start video and TV functions to
carve out a position in the promising field, a company official said
on Wednesday. With the "Qosmio" line to be unveiled on Thursday,
Toshiba seeks to benefit from expected growth in demand for
multimedia computers that can play and digitally record TV programs,
DVDs and other video and audio materials from the Internet.
The laptop will have a 15-inch LCD screen that is brighter and
clearer than other LCD televisions, said Oscar Koenders, Toshiba's
head of marketing of computer systems in Europe. It will also allow
users to turn on a built-in analog TV tuner or DVD player within 5
seconds, avoiding a full system start-up that takes up to several
minutes on a normal laptop. "We don't want to replace the living
room TV set. We are trying to create a completely different market,
just as the iPod did for music," said Koenders, referring to Apple
Computer Inc.'s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) widely popular
digital music player. |
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Source :
Reuters |
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UK to get limited edition Halo 2 |
Added 23/07/04 |
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The limited
collector's edition of Halo 2 that Microsoft announced for North
America (when it revealed the game's release date earlier this year)
will also be available across the pond in the UK, the company
revealed today. The limited edition package can be picked up in
stores on November 11 and will cost an estimated 44.99 pounds
($82.50).
The limited edition's metal box will hold a second DVD as well as
the actual game. The feature-laden disc contains a variety of
featurettes on game design, animation, and music, in addition to
commentaries from the development team, an art gallery, and the
documentary "The Making of Halo 2: Behind the Scenes of Bungie
Studios."
The North American limited edition of Bungie's hotly anticipated
sequel will be available when Halo 2 is released November 9 for
$54.99. |
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Source :
Gamespot |
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Doom III Specs
Revealed |
Added 22/07/04 |
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id Software
CEO Todd Hollenshead has told the Houston Chronicle newspaper
roughly what Doom III's minimum system requirements will be,
hopefully giving anxious gamers a couple of weeks to forge ahead and
level out the bits that matter in time for the game's release - on
August 5th in the US and August 13th in Europe.
The piece focuses on how you might go about upgrading to hit the
requirements (or exceed them, since we all want pretty
upside-down-demon-heads and not just boring normal ones), but the
key information is that the minimum specs will be: a Pentium 4
1.5GHz or AMD Athlon 1500 XP processor, an NVIDIA GeForce3 or ATI
Radeon 8500 graphics card, 384MB RAM, and 2GB hard disk space.
It's certainly a tall order, but then id Software games are
extremely technology focused, and we have a feeling nobody was
expecting much less. |
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Source :
Eurogamer |
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AT&T Wireless
launches high-speed service |
Added 22/07/04 |
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AT&T Wireless
on Tuesday began selling next-generation cell phone service in the
San Francisco Bay Area, Detroit, Phoenix and Seattle. The service
will let subscribers transfer data at speeds between 220 kilobits
per second and 320kbps, if they have a cell phone based on UMTS
(Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) technology or a laptop
with a UMTS card, the carrier revealed Tuesday in newspaper
advertisements introducing "wireless mobility at broadband speed."
AT&T Wireless warns in its ads that streaming video, one of many new
services made possible by the faster bandwidth, is available only on
select devices.Additional details are expected to come later Tuesday
at a press conference involving AT&T Wireless, NTT DoCoMo,
Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and RealNetworks.
The upgrade satisfies an agreement AT&T Wireless has with NTT DoCoMo,
the Japanese cellular service provider that owns a 16 percent stake
in the carrier. AT&T Wireless' choice was either to launch a 3G
network in four cities by year's end or pay a significant amount of
money to NTT DoCoMo.By escaping the threat of a payment that could
have been in the billions of dollars, AT&T Wireless is erasing a
possible roadblock of its proposed acquisition by Cingular Wireless.
The sale is expected to close by year's end.
Half of the top six U.S. cell phone service providers have now
launched 3G, or third-generation, cell phone networks, which create
Net access that carriers assert can compete with the wired variety.
These networks also add desperately needed voice-calling capacity to
wireless carriers' overtaxed networks.
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Source :
c|net |
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