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Businesses

Interest Growing For Pre-Paid Game Cards 70

Worlds in Motion is running an interview with GMG Entertainment, a company finding success marketing pre-paid "digital currency cards" used online for games and other entertainment services. Customers and retailers alike are enjoying the simplicity and utility of the cards, and GMG suggests that this segment of the industry will only continue to grow: "I estimate this year that you'll see EA enter this space for some of their games, and a few other big names are absolutely interested. In fact we're in final negotiations with a couple of recognizable names. We tend to estimate the size of the total pre-paid gaming card business when we do our numbers, and this year we're looking to something between $75-100 million dollars in sales across North America. We see that going to $250-300 million in 2009 and being in the region of a half-billion by 2010. We see this market growing dramatically in the next two to five years."
The Internet

Belgian ISP Scores Victory In Landmark P2P Case 76

secmartin writes "Belgian ISP Scarlet scored an important victory in the first major European test of copyright law. The interim decision forcing them to block transfers of copyrighted materials via P2P has been reversed, because the judge agreed with Scarlet that the measures the Belgian RIAA proposed to implement proved to be ineffective. A final decision is expected next year."
Microsoft

Submission + - Office 2003SP3: Old file formats, now unavailable! 3

time961 writes: "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft has disabled support for many older file formats, so if you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are "less secure", which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source.

Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward "Do you really want to do this?" dialog boxes to click through. And, of course, because these are, after all, old file formats, many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives.

One of the better aspects of Office is its extensive compatibility mechanisms for old file formats. At least the support isn't completely gone—it's just really hard to use. Security is important, but there are better ways to fulfill this goal.

This was also covered by the Windows Secrets newsletter, although I can't find a story URL for it."
Government

Submission + - Linus Chats with the Kazakhstan President (travelpod.com)

zhennian writes: "Okay, this is a little left field, but I did a search and couldn't find the story elsewhere. I'm currently in Kazakhstan, Almaty (old capital) for three months (accompanying my wife on her PhD research). While trolling the un-sub-domained .kz webspace, I came across a free-for-all on-line question and answer session hosted by the Kazakh President. President Nazarbaev, while in the same region as some #1 nutters, is a shrewd, well respected leader struggling to cope with a cut and run by the crumbling Russian regime in 1991, and a population inexperienced in dealing with billions of dollars in oil income. The interesting bit is that I found a question posted by Linus Torvalds asking the president's opinion on open source software. His answer was the evasive but valid response that all types of software should compete in the open market. A question springs to mind, "does Linus spend his time trolling 1-2.5 world countries searching for web forums hosted by leaders attempting to appear internet-savy?".
If the answer is yes, then my respect for the illustrious prince (RMS the father course) of OS freedom has significantly increased, he has time to keep the kernel alive and run global PR as well. The website seems to be only available at the google cache and no longer accessible from e.gov.kz. I think the forum was held in 2006, but it isn't clear from the website. Kazakhstan is certainly an exercise in weirdness, mixing the left-overs of soviet suppression with a widening poverty gap and ridiculous wealth in the hands of a few. The result is pollution, poverty and crumbling infrastructure next to the construction of an arboretum to hold 'all the trees in the world', a temple for 'all the worlds religions' and the construction of numerous other grandiose buildings in the middle of the Steppe. Obligatory Travel Blog here."

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