Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:31 AM CEST - May,09 2003
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- Sony 'very comfortable' with $199 PS2 price point - Responding to
mounting speculation of an imminent price cut, SCEA president Kaz Hirai has
told news agency Reuters that he is "very comfortable" with the $199 price
point, and criticised game bundling moves by competitors. Price drops to
all three consoles had been widely expected to take effect around E3 this
year, just as they did last year - when Microsoft and Sony slashed their
hardware prices $100 to $199, and Nintendo cut the Cube from $199 to $149.
However,
Hirai seemingly doesn't believe that a PS2 price cut is necessary at this
point. He also criticises Nintendo and Microsoft's current policies of
bundling software for free with their consoles - stating that he doesn't
believe that these moves were really helping sales.
- Microsoft Introduces New Pricing for Xbox Live - Microsoft on
Thursday introduced
a more flexible pricing plan for its Xbox Live online video game service,
including a planned free trial period, and raised the price on the basic
starter kit. Microsoft, which is expected to roll out a number of new audio
and video services related to Xbox Live at next week's Electronic
Entertainment Expo, or E3, said subscribers will have the option of a $5.99
monthly fee in North America as of this fall. A one-year renewal or new
subscription will be $49.99, while the Starter Kit, which includes a headset
for voice communications and some bundled game products, will sell for $69.99,
a hike from the current $49.99 price. Microsoft also said a two-month free
trial for the service will be 'widely available' this fall.
- BSA introduces pirate catching game, your kids could be pirate killers!
- In an effort to educate youngsters about software piracy,
the Business
Software Alliance has introduced a game. In the game you have to 'thrown
down your balls against the pirates' (shoot) and catch the licenses. On the
sites also educational contents can be found that can be used by teachers and
parents. The Department of Justice of the US is supporting the initiative with
200.000 USD. If you want to play the game then go here and pick the game
Piracy DeepFreeze. More information about the PlayItCyberSafe intitiative can
be found
here.
- IBM details Blue Gene supercomputer -
IBM has begun building the chips that will be used in the first Blue Gene,
a machine dubbed Blue Gene/L that will run Linux and have more than 65,000
computing nodes, said Bill Pulleyblank, director of IBM's Deep Computing
Institute and the executive overseeing the project. Each node has a small chip
with an unusually large number of functions crammed onto the single slice of
silicon: two processors, four accompanying mathematical engines, 4MB of memory
and communication systems for five separate networks.
- Wristwatch Phone Proves Popular - NTT DoCoMo put its recently
announced
wristwatch telephone on sale for the first time on Wednesday and the
gadget proved to be a hot item. The phone went on sale via NTT DoCoMo's Web
site on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. at a cost $318 including an accessory
pack. The company sold 1,000 of the Wristomo devices, which is all of the
initial batch it was offering for sale, in less than 20 minutes, said Masafumi
Sera, a spokesperson for the Tokyo mobile operator.
- T-Mobile bundles Wi-Fi, cellular services - The Bellevue,
Wash.-based wireless phone company
announced that customers can now consolidate charges for its HotSpot Wi-Fi
service on their monthly cellular phone service bills. The company will do
the same for subscribers using its new General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)
cell phone network in the next few months, it announced. T-Mobile said
customers can add a monthly $19.99 unlimited access Wi-Fi service to their
monthly wireless bill. The charge is at a 50 percent discount over the
company's regular HotSpot rate plans. The service also will continue as a
stand-alone offering by subscription or on a pay-for-use basis.
- "Bionic eye" breakthrough can allow the blind to see -
A "bionic" eye that can help the blind to see has restored partial vision
to three people who lost their sight because of incurable disease. The results
of the first clinical trial of an artificial retina implanted into the eye
showed that it worked well enough to allow the blind to distinguish light from
dark and even to see simple objects. Each patient had an operation to have the
implant fitted over their own damaged retinas. They wore spectacles fitted
with miniature video cameras, which transmitted signals to the implanted
device. All the patients could see far better with the device switched on and
one of them could even tell the difference between everyday objects.
- Microsoft .NET Passport Passwords, Including Hotmail Passwords, Can Be
Changed By Remote Users -
A vulnerability was reported in Microsoft .NET Passport, also affecting
Hotmail accounts. A remote user can change an arbitrary target user's password
to an arbitrary value and then access the target user's account. It is
reported that a remote user can use the .NET Passport password reset form to
request that an arbitrary user's password be changed. The remote user
([email protected]) will then receive an e-mail from the .NET Passport
server providing a URL where the remote user can change the password. The form
does not require the remote user to enter the previous password. Hotmail
accounts using .NET Passport authentication are affected. Other
Passport-related accounts may or may not be affected.
By 8
a.m. PST Thursday, the company had replaced the service with a more secure
version, one that should have been there in the first place, said Adam Sohn,
product manager for Microsoft's Passport team.
- Microsoft will support all major writable DVD formats in future
versions of Windows - Microsoft Corp. today announced at the 12th annual
Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) that
it will provide built-in operating system support for all major writable DVD
formats in future versions of the Windows desktop operating system. This
support will include DVD-RAM, DVD-RW/-R and DVD+RW/+R formats.
- NVIDIA'a UT2K3 Tournament - The Ultimate Gamers Expo (UGE)
and the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) today announced the inclusion
of The NVIDIA Unreal
Tournament 2003 Championship competition at the inaugural Ultimate Gamers
Expo this August 15 - 17.
- Canon EOS 10D Review -
The new Canon EOS 10D Digital SLR camera created a major buzz at this
year's Photo Marketing Association show. Everyone expected Canon to announce a
replacement for its popular Canon EOS D60 digital SLR camera, but few in the
crowd expected the new camera to debut at a street price of $1,500-a full $500
less than the comparable Nikon D100.
- Windows Media Player Patch - Microsoft has issued
a patch for some versions of Windows Media Player, to remove what the
company calls a critical system vulnerability.The flaw involves the part of
Windows Media Player that lets users download new "skins," or visual
interfaces for the player, according to a security advisory on Microsoft's Web
site
- Opera 7.11 Final - Download
with Java /
without Java ~
What's new
- Mozilla 1.3.1 - Mozilla (Win
~
Linux) is an open-source Web browser, designed for standards compliance,
performance and portability. Mozilla is a cousin to Netscape Communicator that
is being developed by the Free Software Community with the cooperation and
support of Netscape.
DirectX 9.0a Redistributable Download -
This download provides the DirectX 9.0a end-user redistributable that
developers can include with their product. The redistributable license
agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable.
For full details please review the DirectX SDK EULA.txt and DirectX Redist.txt
files located in the license directory.
- EPoX 8RDA+ Official BIOS 3507 - EPoX finally released
an official BIOS 3507 for
EpoX 8RDA+.
- Plextor Firmware - Plextor Europe has just released new firmware
versions for their
PX-W4012TS
(v1.02),
PX-S2410TU (v1.01) and
PX-504A (v1.01).
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Updated:10:40 PM CEST Jun,21
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