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Music

Submission + - New Radiohead album's price: You choose

Submitted by syphoon
syphoon writes: British band Radiohead have announced the forthcoming release of their new album "In Rainbows" on October 10th. Unencumbered by a label contract, they have opted to sell it as both a download and a disc box. The interesting part? Not only will it be DRM-free, but the price of the download is completely up to the customer.
Microsoft

Submission + - Euro 311,85 Remboursement For MS-Tax In France (libre-zone.net)

Submitted by
Chris Hildebrandt
Chris Hildebrandt writes: "A French court decided yesterday that Acer had to pay back 311,85 for unused and unwanted pre-installed operating system + software to a guy who bought an 599, — notebook. Additionaly they had to pay 650, — for the time lost in court plus all court related costs.

Full story here: http://perso.libre-zone.net/article-125-proc-dure-r-ussie-num-ro-4.html (French only at the moment, but the story will definitely hit English language news agencies later today)."
Nintendo

Submission + - Big Plans for Wii Lightsaber Game (forceunleashed.net)

Submitted by
Moelman
Moelman writes: "During a demonstration for LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga for Wii at the Activate Asia Pacific conference, LucasArts' own Mark Montuya made a comment that LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga for Wii is "just a taster" for a future release of Wii lightsaber combat. This sound bit brings the hopes and dreams of geeks everywhere to a reality, implying that LucasArts is already hard at work on a game to use this functionality. Montuya would not comment further on how it would work, but issues that would seem to be difficult to overcome would be how to portray the lightsaber clashing against another object or lightsaber."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - The Babylon Project finished

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: (Please write a story out of this while it's fresh, it seems to be flying under the radar and Slashdot ought to have some Babylon 5 fans!)

Just informing that this project is now finished at the "3.4" version. I just tried it for the first time and I felt like I was playing Tie Fighter, it's so professionally done. You couldn't tell it's free total conversion from the graphics or the size of 2 GB.

Only the voice acting isn't quite up there but I've heard worse in commercial games.

So if you ever liked Tie/Xwing/Freespace/I-War or B5 generally this is definitely worth getting.

You may need to install OpenAL, the game itself is here: http://www.mininova.org/tor/793103 and players/devs at http://www.hard-light.net/
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Gives Xandros Users Patent Protection (eweek.com)

Submitted by
AlexGr
AlexGr writes: "By Peter Galli (eWeek): Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers. These covenants, which are almost identical to the patent agreement and covenant not to sue that Microsoft signed with Novell last November, will ensure that the Xandros Linux technologies customers use are compliant with Microsoft's IP, David Kaefer, Microsoft's General Manager for IP and Licensing, told eWeek. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2140955,00.as p"
Space

Submission + - NASA think tank to be shut down

Submitted by
Matthew Sparkes
Matthew Sparkes writes: "NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics. The move highlights the budget problems the agency is facing as it struggles to retire the space shuttles and develop a replacement. The institute receives $4 million per year from NASA, whose annual budget is $17 billion. Most of that is used to fund research into innovative technologies; recent grants include the conceptual development of spacecraft that could surf the solar system on magnetic fields, motion-sensitive spacesuits that could generate power and tiny, spherical robots that could explore Mars."

Revolution Worldwide Launch Possible 77

Posted by Zonk from the anything-is-possible dept.
hammersuit writes "GameDaily Biz reports that a Nintendo Revolution simultaneous global launch is still in the cards. From the article: 'Bloomberg.com suggested that Nintendo would avoid a global launch. However, a Nintendo representative today said that those comments were misinterpreted. 'The comments have been taken out of context,' said the Nintendo spokesperson. 'What he's actually saying is that we're not holding a worldwide launch just because everyone else is doing one too. It's just another re-iteration of the fact that we're not looking at what Sony or Microsoft are doing.'"

Region-free PS3 356

Posted by samzenpus from the anytime-anywhere dept.
An anonymous reader writes "IGN writes that "In a QA session following the platform keynote address at GDC 2006 this morning, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison confirmed what was heavily demanded for import gamers all over the world and yet previously thought unthinkable for a major corporation: the PS3 will be region-free for gaming." There's no chance that the MPAA members would allow the same for movies but at least it's a step in the right direction."

DoJ Following Porn Blocker Advances? 265

Posted by Zonk from the dirty-little-program dept.
GreedyCapitalist writes "A new filter called iShield is able to recognize porn images based on the content of the image (other filters look at URLs and text) and according to PC Magazine, it is very effective. The next generation will probably be even better -- which highlights the retarding effect regulation has on technological progress - if we relied solely on government to ban 'inappropriate' content from the web, we'd never know what solutions the market might come up with. Will the DOJ (which argues that porn filters don't work) take note of filtering innovation or continue its quest for censorship?"

Google Avoids Surrendering Search Info 226

Posted by Zonk from the dodged-that-bullet dept.
Mercury News has details of a San Francisco judge's decision that Google should give the DoJ some details on its search engine, but is not required to turn over records to the government. From the article: "McElvain emphasized the study would be more meaningful if it included search requests processed by Google, which by some estimates fields nearly half of all online queries in the United States. Ware concurred with the Justice Department on that point, writing in his order that 'the government's study may be significantly hampered if it did not have access to some information from the most often used search engine.' But Ware said the government didn't clearly explain why it needed a list of search requests to conduct its study, prompting him to conclude the Web site addresses would be adequate." Reaction to the news is available on the Google Blog.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Coming Soon to PCs 209

Posted by Zonk from the not-that-there's-anything-to-play dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Yahoo! news piece has some sales details for the upcoming Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players. They also have some details on disc drives that read the new formats." From the article: "Sony has priced its first desktop computer that will have a Blu-ray Disc burner. The drive will be able to write to 25GB and 50GB BD-RE (rewritable) and BD-R (write once) discs. Sony will start selling 25GB BD-RE and BD-R discs in April for $20 and $25 respectively and 50GB capacity versions of the same discs later in the year for $48 and $60 respectively. The Vaio RC will be launched in 'early summer' and will cost around $2300. At the CeBIT show in Germany last week, Sony announced plans for a Vaio notebook with a Blu-ray Disc drive."

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