U.S. cautious on Mexico plan to legalize drugs

Ambassador says measure could make law enforcement more effective
Associated Press
Updated: 10:30 p.m. ET April 29, 2006

MEXICO CITY - The United States reacted cautiously on Saturday to a Mexican measure that would make it legal to carry small amounts of cocaine, heroin and other drugs for personal use.

... President Vicente Fox has yet to sign the bill, which would eliminate penalties for those caught with small amounts of some drugs, but his office has applauded it.

Source and full story: MSNBC

Sony to bring net-based TV-to-PSP streaming to Europe

By Tony Smith
28th April 2006 11:05 GMT

Sony will next month launch its LocationFree TV (LFTV) service in the UK and other key European territories, allowing PlayStation Portable users to receive television programmes transmitted from the home and out across the internet. Mac users are to get access to the service too.

LPTV support is included in the PSP firmware update - version 2.7 - Sony announced this week. The upgrade - due to be posted on the Sony Computer Entertainment Europe website on 25 May - also adds podcast and RSS support, and the ability to handle AAC and WMA music files.

Source and full story: RegHardware

TDK cracks 200GB Blu-ray Disc problem

By Tony Smith
28th April 2006 15:42 GMT


TDK has gone ahead and produced the 200GB Blu-ray Disc it announced a few weeks ago that it was working on. And while it appears to have failed to compress four standard dual-layer 50GB discs together into a single unit, it has nonetheless come up with a novel alternative.

According to a subscription-only report on Japanese-language site Techon, the 200GB BD contains six data-storage layers.

... And since the 200GB disc is not more part of the current Blu-ray Disc specification than this reporter is, you can argue that the 200GB disc, while technologically impressive, isn't about to allow anyone to cram the whole of the extended edition Lord of the Rings movies, extras and all, on a single, HD disc. ®

Source and full story: RegHardware

Revolution Officially Renamed 'Wii'

Nintendo has officially ditched the drab "Revolution" name for its next-gen console, and adopted the more sophisticated "Wii".
By Kris Graft
Updated: Thursday, 27 April 2006

Less than two weeks before E3, Nintendo has released a statement addressing the change-up, and explained what exactly the name Wii represents:

"While the code-name 'Revolution' expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else."

"Wii will put people more in touch with their games … and each other. But you’re probably asking: What does the name mean? Wii sounds like 'we,' which emphasizes this console is for everyone."

View: Nintendo Wii
I found this at: neowin.net
Full story: Next Generation

Firefox Backers Create 'Destroy IE' Campaign

'Explorer Destroyer' movement takes aim at Microsoft's browser.
Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service
Tuesday, April 25, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- A group of self-titled "political activists" in Massachusetts has started an aggressive campaign to get browser users to switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's Firefox.

Taking advantage of a new program by Google, the campaign, called Explorer Destroyer, pays users $1 for each referral to Firefox made through Google Toolbar, according to the group's Web site.

"You already want people to switch to Firefox. Now's the time to get serious about it," according to the site. "Google is paying $1 for each new Firefox user you refer....Now you can advance your ideals, save people from popups and spyware hell, and make some serious money."

I found this at: neowin.net
Full story: PCWorld.com

Microsoft WGA Becomes Nagware

Posted by Tim Davis on 25 April 2006 - 16:59

Microsoft announced that on Tuesday it will make Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) more bothersome than ever. A new update for WGA is now on the Windows Update website as a mandatory update. Once installed, your copy of Windows will be checked for validity. If your Windows installation is found not to be genuine, Windows will display a message telling you that “This copy of Windows is not genuine.” Windows will check and display messages on every boot as well as once an hour (or so). The new WGA tool also puts an icon in your system tray if your copy of Windows is not genuine.

Once notified and prompted to validate your copy of Windows, you will have 14 days to do so. If after 14 days you do not comply, you will not be able to download updates from the Windows Update website. Critical security updates will still be available via the Automatic Update built into Windows.

More information: Aviran's Place
Source and full story: neowin.net
Related: Disable Non Genuine Windows Warning Messages: WGA Workarounds remove WGATray.exe

Gay flamingos strike long-term relationship

Carlos and Fernando: model pink parents
By Lester Haines
Published Monday 24th April 2006 14:44 GMT

... According to the WWT report, greater flamingos Carlos and Fernando have been hitched for five years. Twice a year they strut their stuff in an "elaborate courtship dance" before "stealing eggs from their heterosexual neighbours to bring up as their own".

WWT aviculture manager Nigel Jarrett elaborates: "Their parental instincts are very strong prompting them to raid the nests of other couples in the flock. They have been known to fight the heterosexual birds and there is usually a 'handbags at dawn' moment where they will fight with another couple before stealing their egg. They are both large adult males so as a partnership they are quite formidable and are afforded more respect from the other birds. They are also very good parents and behave just as the heterosexual birds do when rearing their young."

Source and full story: theregister.com

Seagate readies 750GB desktop hard drive

By Tony Smith
21st April 2006 08:41 GMT

Seagate is on the verge of announcing a 3.5in desktop hard drive with a capacity of 750GB - increasing the Barracuda 7200.10 line's maximum storage space by 50 per cent. Seagate hasn't formally announced the 750GB model, but it is already beginning to appear on the company's marketing material.

The drive runs at 7,200rpm and contains 16MB of cache memory. Like other models in the line, it has an average latency of 4.2ms. Seagate will offer the HDD with a choice of Ultra ATA 100, 1.5Gbps SATA or 3Gbps SATA interfaces. The Serial ATA versions both support Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

Source and full story: RegHardware

Mozilla users warned--upgrade now

Users have been urged to upgrade to the latest versions of Mozilla's software to protect themselves from a series of critical security holes.
By Tom Espiner, ZDNet (UK)
Published on ZDNet News: April 19, 2006, 8:11 AM PT

The Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) warned on Monday that earlier versions of Firefox, and other Mozilla software based on Firefox code, contain a clutch of vulnerabilities that expose users to attack.

The Mozilla Foundation released a new version of Firefox last week, version 1.5.0.2, which it said contained fixes for several security flaws.

According to security firm Secunia, there are a total of 21 flaws in the older versions of Firefox, such as Firefox 1.5, some of which it described as critical.

I found this at: neowin.net
Full story: ZDNet

Philips Attempts to Patent Advertisement Enforcing

Posted by Tim Davis on 19 April 2006 - 12:56

If Philips has their way you may not be skipping through TV commercials much longer. In fact, you might not even be able to change the channel on your TV during a commercial.

Philips has filed a patent application to stop people from changing channels during commercials or fast forward commercials for pre-recorded shows. According the patent application, Philips solution is to use MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) to read flags in broadcasts. If an advertisement is marked as such, your STB (Set-Top Box), DVR or even your TV could stop you from changing the channel or skipping past commercials. MHP software is already built into most digital TV receivers and recorders available today.

View: Philips Patent Application

Source and full story: neowin.net

Teen kills brother over video game console

Big brother battered
By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 18 April 2006, 15:08

A 13 YEAR OLD Nagasaki boy allegedly beat his 15 year-old brother to death in a battle over a video game console.

It appears that the row was over putting the console back in its box.

Apparently the younger boy punched and kicked his brother until he was unconscious. The boy was taken to hospital but died some hours later.

Source and full story: INQUIRER

EXCLUSIVE: TOM CHEWS

Mission Impossible star Cruise vows to eat placenta after birth
By Patrick Mulchrone
18 April 2006

TOM Cruise yesterday revealed his latest bizarre mission..to eat his new baby's placenta.

Cruise vowed he would tuck in straight after girlfriend Katie Holmes gives birth, saying he thought it would be "very nutritious".

The Mission Impossible star, 43, said: "I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there." It is the latest in a series of increasingly strange outbursts from Cruise in the run-up to the birth.

He has claimed the baby, due any day, will be delivered in total silence.

Full story: Mirror.co.uk

Universal releases first HD DVD movie

By Tony Smith
18th April 2006 14:01 GMT

Universal, at least, is ready for anyone who's just bought a Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player in the US and wants some hi-def films to play on it. Make that 'movie' - the studio's Home Entertainment division today began shipping its first and only HD DVD title, Serenity, but you'll have to wait a week for further discs.

Today's disc costs $35, as will future releases: Doom and Apollo 13 on 25 April; Cinderella Man, Jarhead and Assault on Precinct 13 on 9 May; and The Chronicles of Riddick, Van Helsing, U-571 and The Bourne Supremacy on 23 May, more than a month away.

... Warner is also expected to ship its first HD DVD titles today, offering Million Dollar Baby, The Last Samurai and The Phantom of the Opera for $29 a pop. ®

Source and full story: RegHardware

DVD+RW bosses OK double-layer rewriteable format

By Tony Smith
17th April 2006 15:10 GMT

The DVD+RW Alliance, the organisation behind the unofficial rewriteable DVD standard, has approved a dual-layer version of the DVD+RW disc specification. Like existing DVD+R two-layer media, the rewriteable form sports a capacity of 8.5GB.

According to Japanese-language site PCWatch, the Alliance approved version 1.0 of the DVD+RW DL specification late last week. As yet, however, no announcement appears to have been made by the Alliance itself.

The write speed is 2.4x, the report claims. ®

Source: RegHardware

Gigabyte Radeon X1900XTX review

By Steven Walton on April 14th, 2006

ATI is now on track with a wide range of new and exciting products, the latest of which is a terrifying 48 pixel pipeline monster. Known as the Radeon X1900 this new GPU comes in two flavors.

The Radeon X1900XT features a core clock of 625MHz, matching that of the now older X1800XT. The memory frequency is slightly lower than that of the X1800XT as it has been dropped down to 1.45GHz. However, thanks to an additional 32 pixel pipelines the X1900XT is more than likely to compensate for that.

... Bottom-line is the Radeon X1900XTX is an incredible product, probably ATI’s most impressive achievement yet. However, you have to question the value of such a product, at $500-600 the Radeon X1900XTX is also the most expensive gaming card on the market along with competing GeForce 7900 GTX which costs about the same.

Considering that the slightly lower clocked X1900XT can save you some money, it could well become a better option instead. It all depends on the deal you come across, as all of these products are predestined to drop in price, sometimes even dramatically, we already could find some Radeon X1900XT cards retailing for less than $450, making them quite a good ‘value’.

In the majority of the tests the Radeon X1900XTX was not a hell of a lot faster than the older Radeon X1800XT. Although it was faster in every test, the performance margins never really exceeded 5-6fps; given the average frame rate was always above 60fps this is not a huge difference. That said the Radeon X1900XT is only going to be a couple of frames slower than the X1900XTX.

I found this at: neowin.net
Full review: TechSpot

Ubisoft officially dumps Starforce

Citing "complaints," the publisher ends its relationship with the copyright-protection provider.
By Tor Thorsen -- GameSpot
Posted Apr 13, 2006 5:56 pm PT

Following several days of rumors, Ubisoft has officially confirmed that it will no longer use the controversial digital-rights software from Starforce. "Ubisoft has decided to use an alternative copy-protection system to Starforce for upcoming releases," said a rep for the company. The announcement means that Starforce software will not be included in Heroes of Might and Magic V, the publisher's much-anticipated forthcoming PC role-playing game.

... Ubisoft's motivation for ending its agreement with Starforce was more personal. At the end of March, the company was slapped with a $5 million lawsuit by gamers who claimed that Starforce's DRM system compromised the security of their PCs. "We are currently investigating complaints about alleged problems with Starforce's software," said the Ubisoft rep.

Source and full story: GameSpot

D12's Proof Shot And Killed At Detroit Club

Police questioning witnesses, searching for shooter.
04.11.2006 9:46 AM EDT

Proof, a member of the Eminem-fronted Detroit-based hip-hop sextet D12, was killed early Tuesday morning outside a Detroit nightclub in a shooting that left another man in critical condition.

According to a spokesperson for the Detroit Police Department, Proof (real name: DeShaun Holton) suffered a gunshot wound to the head at the CCC Club on East Eight Mile Road, near Gratiot Avenue. By the time police arrived just after 5 a.m., the club — which was operating illegally, after hours — had been cleared out, but several witnesses have come forward to discuss the incident with investigators.

Source and full story: mtv.com

Related: Proof's MySpace

Firefox breaks 10% barrier

By Eric Lai
Wednesday - April 05, 2006

Firefox, the free, open-source browser from Mozilla, quietly gained enough users in March to finally grab 10 per cent of the web browser market, according to a report released by web audience measurement firm Net Applications.

Firefox was used by 10.05 per cent of web surfers last month, up from 9.75 per cent in February. That compared to the 84.7 per cent of users on various versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) in March.

I found this at: neowin.net
Full story: Macworld UK

PSOne Emulator for PSP

By the man on 04.06.06 7:02 pm

Someone tipped QJ.net with these screenshots of Sony’s upcoming PSOne emulator for the PSP. Users who install this emulator will have the option of downloading Playstation games onto their memory stick(s) to play via a “Game” menu. The games are to cost $15 each (as seen above). No word yet on when this service will launch. One more pic after the jump.

Source: TechEBlog

Related: PSone Emulator "leak" fake?

EA to Gamers : Give us your email, or get lost!

Posted Apr 05, 2006 at 10:19PM by Pranav T.

We told you earlier that EA was asking first-time online Fight Night 3 players to sign up for their mailing list or pay $2 to opt out.

Well, we've received an update. And it's not good by any means.

Ben Kuchera at Opposable Thumbs (an Ars Technica journal) reports that the situation has gotten worse. Apparently, EA Games has access to your Xbox Live account, and that includes - hold your breath - your credit card information! So you don't think it's a big deal ? Well, mention the words 'spam' and 'credit card' in the same sentence and you can expect bad things to happen.

Want more? Well, you can generally opt out of such things, but not with EA. If they can't email you whatever they want (including spam), they block your access to EA's Online Games. Secondly, when you buy an EA Game, you play on servers which aren't as stable as Microsoft's. Plus, you'll be signing up for EA's emails, whether you want to or not.

This whole episode is sure to make gamers angry. Stay tuned for the latest updates.

Source: QJ.NET

Hitachi Releases 1TB HDD Recorder

posted by TechEMaster on 04.05.06 @ 3:08 am

Hitachi has just released the DV-DH1000D HDD/DVD recorder with an amazing 1TB of storage in Japan. At $1,800 (210,000 yen), this recorder features “Hi-Vision” technology, allowing you to record two high-definition programs simultaneously. Other features include USB connectivity, an SD card slot, A/V inputs, and HDMI ports.

Source: TechEBlog

Finally, 'Boot Camp' means XP can run on Intel Mac's...

Posted Apr 05, 2006 at 06:35AM by Michael K.

Well it seems Apple have given into consumer pressure, and also pressure from those taking a back door approach to running XP on Intel Mac's. As of today you can download a patch/application called Boot Camp from the Apple website which allows you to install Windows XP, only if you have the official install disks. What this means is, its an official way of installing, with more driver support, which overly means that people wont have to go through the long process of doing the install through the back door.

The software also allows either operating system, Mac OS X or XP, to be booted on restart. It is announced that the software will be Incorporated as standard on the forthcoming Mac OS X v10.5 'Leopard'. The patch includes a step-by-step guide on doing the install, so pretty much anybody can use it. At the moment it will be a trial beta, and the full version will be included in Mac OS X v10.5 'Leopard' in its expected show off in August at the Worldwide Developer Conference.

Related: New Mac OS X > Boot Camp > Windows XP screens...
Source: QJ.NET

Lucent takes legal action against Microsoft over Xbox 360

Patent place, again
By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 04 April 2006, 11:07

NETWORKING GIANT Lucent is suing Microsoft alleging it breaches a patent it holds.
The patent, 5,227,878, was issued to Lucent on July 13th 1993 and called "Adaptive Coding and Decoding of Frames and Fields of Video".

It's not the first time Lucent and Microsoft have crossed swords on patents, nor indeed this one. An action started two years ago and in August 2005, the judge presiding in that case granted a summary judgement of invalidity because of a typo in the patent. That forced Lucent to get a certificate from the US patent office to correct the typo, which was issued at the end of October last year.

But, said Lucent in its filing at the end of March, Microsoft has infringed this patent by releasing the Xbox 360 console, which has MPEG2 tech - it's alleged that's a breach of the Lucent patent.

Source and full story: INQUIRER

iPod To Help Katie Holmes Give Birth in Silence?

Posted Apr 03, 2006 at 04:30AM by Maricar V.

Here's another one to add to the iPod's feature list - "helps mothers give birth in silence".

Tom Cruise has brought Katie Holmes an iPod loaded with 300 of her favorite songs, but mostly soothing songs that are supposed to keep her from making a sound during childbirth (I wonder what's on that playlist). According to Scientology beliefs, screaming sounds could traumatize the baby for years.

Epidural anyone?

Source: QT.NET

Related: South Park declares war on Scientology

RIP UMD?

Posted by Tim Brookes on 31 March 2006 - 14:39

One of Sony's flagship technologies has been threatened by Hollywood's leading studios after sales of UMD movies failed to get off the ground.

Gamespy is reporting that Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Paramount Pictures have completely halted production of movies in the UMD format, amidst speculation over Walmart's future in the UMD business.

Paramount Pictures spokesperson Brenda Ciccone said: "We continue to evaluate the PSP platform for each title, and if it makes sense for business reasons and the target audience, we will release them."

She added: "Our focus right now is much more aimed at HD at the moment, though."

Image Entertainment will too be burying their involvement with UMD, and both 20th Century Fox and Buena Vista Home Entertainment have confirmed their intention to cut back on the titles released for the platform.

View: Neowin Discussion Thread
Source and full story: neowin.net