Microsoft has decided to fight an uphill battle against the European Commission by appealing a $1.4 billion fine levied against it for not complying with a milestone European Commission anti-trust ruling. The software giant says it is making a “constructive effort to seek clarity from the court.”
The fine was imposed because of Microsoft's non-compliance with earlier anti-trust rulings and for charging excessive royalty fees to rivals seeking inter-operability information for their server software. European Commission spokesperson Jonathan Todd said in a statement that the commission is “confident that the decision to impose the fine is legally sound.”
The decision to appeal is a bit surprising considering Microsoft had said earlier this year it wanted to make a fresh start in its often bitter relations with the commission. In any case, it seems there’ll be yet another chapter in Microsoft’s decade-long brawl with the EU over antitrust issues.
by Justin Mann on May 9, 2008, 3:06 PM | (2 comments)
The MPAA's lust for outrageous amounts of money is rearing itself again for the second time this week. Now, they are demanding a less than paltry sum of $15.4 million from The Pirate bay, citing losses due to piracy. In particular, they are demanding fees per-download for various episodes of TV shows and several movies. The Pink Panther, for instance, has been downloaded about 50,000 times via TPB.
Of course, The Pirate Bay is being their usual selves and isn't doing much more than laughing at the MPAA's claim. They say the figure is a made up number for a made up crime. Interestingly, the MPAA's stance on downloading is pretty hard-line. Even if someone paid to see the movie and even bought a DVD copy, the MPAA still believes that the same person downloading the movie is breaking the law and must pay through the nose for their offenses. Most humorously, the lawyer representing the MPAA claims she is now fearful of her computer being hacked by TPB supporters.
With more and more users having access to Windows XP SP3, what is the story of their experience? A horror story, it seems, with many users complaining of numerous issues post-install. The problems range from random blue-screens and reboots to crashes to issues with external storage and outright failed installs. This story isn't unique, with just about every service pack release causing havoc in some fashion or another. If you recall the releases of Vista SP1, XP SP2, XP SP1 and even further back, every service pack release has had some serious growing pains. There are no specific figures as to how widespread the issues are, but as they are discovered there will be more information on how to avoid having problems when upgrading.
The issues usually stem from trying to upgrade machines already in service, rather than installing it on new machines. Of course, the majority of people out there are not going to wipe their machines just to use SP3. One interesting note is SP3's refusal to install if you have any beta of IE8 installed. As these issues are tracked down, hopefully Microsoft will work to resolve them.
If you're a Mac user and you squirrel away receipts, you might be in luck. Any Apple customer who purchased a replacement power adapter for a Powerbook or iBook in prior years is going to soon be eligible for a refund. Given that their cost can soar above $80, that's certainly a nice treat.
The reasoning for the refunds is due to a lawsuit settlement that originally got started back in 2001, after Apple recalled a small number of power adapters. Unfortunately for Apple and perhaps some customers too, it seems that the company wasn't exactly truthful about the scope of the problem. The refunds are not yet available, and won't be for a few months. It is unfortunate that in many of these cases, people must take a company in court to get them to admit to a serious error.
When Sony BMG became the last major label to sell DRM-free tracks, we all hoped the consumer-hostile technology would soon be dead and forgotten – at least for the music industry. According to RIAA’s David Hughes, however, news of DRM’s death has been greatly exaggerated and in fact it is poised to make a comeback to make up for where it has fallen.
Of course, DRM still exists in iTunes – which is already the largest music retailer in the US – and a number of online music stores, but Hughes stressed out that consumers are to ditch per-track purchases in favor of subscription services and that’s why DRM will reemerge in a big way. He acknowledged, though, that a less intrusive form of DRM than what’s offered today is needed, but stopped short of giving any concrete solution.
One thing is for certain, people don’t like being limited on how they can use or where they can play their purchased songs. Legal issues aside, at a time when free unrestricted downloads are already broadly and easily available on peer-to-peer networks, restrictive DRM schemes pretty much guarantee customers will go elsewhere.
HP’s Mini-Note 2133 sub-notebook is currently available with either pre-installed Windows Vista or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 only, but the Eee competitor is due to get all-new Windows XP configurations this month, and it looks like early pricing details are starting to leak out.
According to reports, four new mini models preloaded with XP will be available next week. A base 1.2GHz rig with 1GB of RAM and a 120GB disk will run you $729, while the higher end-model bumps things up to 1.6GHz, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive for about $819 – fairly steep for a “low-cost” sub-notebook. No word on when – or if – HP will switch to Intel's upcoming Atom platform.
Looking to further reduce the chances of overheating while bringing down production costs as well, Microsoft reportedly plans to release a new version its Xbox 360 video game system code-named Jasper in August. The new design will feature a shrunken 65nm ATI graphics core to go along with IBM’s 65nm Xenon CPU that was introduced with the Falcon refresh.
The new design is said to require less power, have a more simplified cooling system, and most importantly produce less noise. Reports point at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, and Nanya as being signed on the project. TSMC will produce the 65nm chips, ASE will package and test them, and Nanya will supply the flip-chip packaging substrates. Next up in the 360’s chip process evolution is “Valhalla,” which will reportedly combine the CPU and GPU into a new super-efficient chip for fall of 2009.
Unlimited bandwidth is almost regarded as a universal right in the United States – and many other developed nations – but the growing demand for music, videos, and peer-to-peer traffic has left ISPs scrambling for ways to avoid excessive burdens on their networks. And unfortunately – for bandwidth hogs, at least – one idea that has been gaining traction among providers is implementing a monthly download cap and overage charges.
That’s exactly what Comcast is looking into, according to Broadband Reports. While still in the early stages of development, the plan would see users getting a 250GB per month cap. Users would not be penalized if they crossed that limit once during a 12-month period, but if they did it again, they could be charged $15 for every 10GB they go over.
Many will take issue with Comcast’s proposed download cap, but Internet billing based on usage is certainly nothing new. Broadband provider Cox already places bandwidth caps on its customers, while Time Warner Cable is considering following suit as well. At least Comcast's proposed cap – though not official yet – seems high enough for most users.
Despite Vista struggling with the public’s perception, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is touting the OS’ “rapid sales rate” saying 140 million copies have been sold thus far. Gates did not specify whether those were licenses, retail copies, or some combination of the two – but the latter is more likely.
The update is the first since the company crossed the 100 million mark at the end of last year, meaning Microsoft could be selling around 10 million copies of Vista per month – of course, a great portion of this stem from licenses for new computers as part of users’ regular upgrade cycles.
Things may not be as rosy on the Vista front as Microsoft would want us to believe, however, with around 160,000 people having signed an online petition asking the company to continue selling its predecessor until the next version of Windows is released. Not to mention Dell, HP and Lenovo are saying they will continue to sell XP past its June 30 sales cut-off date.
The success of low-cost notebooks has been a bit of an anomaly. The performance specs on them are not impressive, even if you measure by standards from years ago. Small displays, slow CPUs, little storage – and yet the market has been gobbling them up. That market may get even bigger, according to research by the IDC that says the demand for them is expected to only go up.
The IDC believes that more and more people will be attracted to low-cost PCs as “secondary” alternatives to a desktop or a larger laptop, relying on the device solely as a web or Wi-Fi accessing tool that can be toted around much easier. With half the size and a third of the weight of a regular sized laptop, they are certainly easier to carry around if you must have it with you all day.
If that does pan out, they expect the market for low cost laptops to soar to over 9 million a year by 2012. If that truly is the case, then the large number of companies entering into the market might not be overcrowding at all, but a good preparation for larger adoptions to come.
Hitachi has updated their Travelstar lineup of laptop hard drives, adding a new unit that will be a contender for the fastest mobile drive around. The new Travelstar 7K320 has an ample 320GB of space that spins at an impressive 7200RPM, the top end of the speed arena in laptop technology. The unit is a significant step up from other Hitachi offerings, and puts them in a position to have one of the very few high-capacity 7200RPM laptop drives available.
With a thermal profile of 1.8W when operating, it won't be extremely friendly on battery life but isn't astronomically bad either. It'll definitely get hotter than a 5400RPM unit, but for drives at this speed they probably aren't intended for low-power, long battery life units anyway.
Laptops made huge headroom into the “replacement desktop” category with large advances in mobile CPU and GPU technologies. Today, it's easy to get a laptop that has CPU and GPU performance on-par with a desktop, perfectly suitable for demanding tasks like games. One area it has still suffered in, though, is hard drive performance. The majority of laptop HDDs spinning at 5400RPM simply can't compete with a very cheap desktop competitor, and 7200RPM drives were relatively rare. Now they are much more commonplace and becoming affordable, making laptop drives that can compete with desktop drives easier to find.
If you have made an amazing headway into the console market from scratch, what's your next move? For Microsoft, it's encouraging people to stop playing games. Well, kinda. The Xbox 360 is teaming up with the BGCA to launch the “National Family Fitness Day”, a program designed to encourage people to exercise more and sit around less.
But naturally, they aren't going for this completely in the name of charity. Microsoft will use the event to push gaming as an option for staying fit, putting Dance Dance Revolution 2 on the center stage as an icon of active gaming. The Nintendo Wii definitely has a one-up on them in this category, and Microsoft now wants to pursue this lucrative market composed of casual gamers, all while trying to change the notion of a gamer lifestyle being unhealthy.
By the same time we heard about TorrentSpy having the axe brought down upon them with a massive $111 million judgment against them, they have opted to appeal. The attorney representing TorrentSpy claims that the $111 million figure was solely picked by the Judge to draw attention to the case, and points out that TorrentSpy is a company with no real assets and that is already bankrupt.
However, TorrentSpy faces more than just charges for aiding piracy. They have also been accused of destroying evidence, which makes things more convoluted, and may have played a part in the atrociously large $111 million sum.
After breaking records for first-day sales, GTA IV has continued that success, furthering it into this week. With less than 10 days behind the game going gold, GTA IV now has broken first-week sales records with an estimated 6 million copies sold worldwide. That represents half a billion in sales, and obviously is making both Take Two and Rockstar very happy.
The new game has sparked off a slew of controversies, from crazy lawyers to city officials and more. Despite that, people have swarmed to the game. Interestingly, a Take Two Chairman made the assertion that GTA IV, and perhaps other titles in the future, is surpassing movies and music for sales figures on a launch day. That's quite a difference when we can all remember a time not too far back when video games were a drop in the bucket.
