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Microsoft

Epic, Microsoft Disagree On Gears Content 72

This past week, Epic's VP Mark Rein spoke with the gentlemen at 1up on the '1up Yours' Podcast. It was ... most informative. It seems that the much-delayed downloadable content for Gears of War is being held up by Microsoft, who wants to charge for the content for the game. "In the effort of promoting a profitable marketplace, however, Microsoft's compromised with the studio by deciding to follow the successful model that Halo 2 pioneered a few years ago: the new Gears of War maps will be available for a to-be-determined fee, and made free a few months from now." The site also has hands-on details for 'Annex', the new (free) multiplayer gameplay type.
The Courts

Submission + - Utah Bans Keyword Advertising

Eric Goldman writes: "Last month, Utah passed a law banning keyword advertising. Rep. Dan Eastman, the Utah legislator who sponsored the law, believes competitive keyword advertising is the equivalent of corporate identity theft, causing searchers to be (in his words) "carjacked" and "shanghaied" by advertisers. He also takes a swipe at the EFF, dismissing its critique of the law as "criticism from the fringes." I have posted a response to Rep. Eastman."

Feed Studios Continue To Ignore Just How Badly They Hamstring Legal Download Sites (techdirt.com)

It's been clear since the outset that the movie download sites supported by Hollywood studios have been far too clunky and user-unfriendly to attract many users, and they've made only marginal improvements over the years. They provide the perfect insight into how the movie industry puts its stupid fears about piracy above everything else -- including creating a product that consumers will actually want to pay for. While it's been blindingly obvious to many of us, Jeff writes in to point out that BusinessWeek is highlighting, for Hollywood's benefit, the fact that these sites will never be successful when copy protection is the top priority. It's often easy to marginalize complaints that an overemphasis on DRM and copy protection are hurting big content's business as the whining of a tiny group of geeky consumers, but articles like this one in mainstream publications make it clear that isn't the case, and that only when services like these are usable and useful do they stand a chance of succeeding. Still, the movie studios must not read BusinessWeek, since it was almost a year ago that another article in the magazine pointed out that the movie studios couldn't find a buyer for Movielink, the download site they own, because all the potential buyers realized that it will never succeed as long as the studios insist on locking down their content so rigidly.

Feed US senate to consider two stem cell bills (pheedo.com)

One is nearly identical to a bill the president vetoed in 2006 that would have encouraged federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research; the other is a compromise measure

The Internet

Submission + - Is the Internet Ready to Break?

DebNY writes: The rapid rise of Web video and broadband net access "may overwhelm some of the Internet's backbones" in 2007, while "ISPs may struggle to keep pace with demand." So says a study from the Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) group at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. But reports of the Internet's imminent demise are greatly exaggerated, says Ed Cone of CIO Insight. "An Internet that is broken or seriously impaired at its core would obviously be bad for business in all kinds of ways...but as in the case of the most notorious prognostication of impending disaster, made in 1995 by Ethernet co-inventor Robert Metcalfe, the doom seers seem likely to eat their words. In fact, the supply of available bandwidth, especially at the core of the net, looks healthier than the pessimists would have it — or even bother to support with hard numbers when pressed to defend their arguments."
Microsoft

Submission + - ODF threat to Microsoft in US governments grows

Tookis writes: California has introduced a bill to make open document format (ODF) a mandatory requirement for agencies when acquiring software, turning up the heat on Microsoft. The bill follows similar legislation in Texas and Minnesota and adds further to the pressure on Microsoft which is pushing its own proprietary Office Open XML (OOXML) document format in the recently released Office 2007. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10150/53/

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