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Submission + - Sony Plans Serial Keys for PlayStation3 Games (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: Rumour has it that Sony is looking to the PC games market to help solve its growing piracy problem on the PlayStation 3 — with the introduction of serial keys to its games.

According to 'a very reliable source' quoted by PS3-Sense, Sony is attempting to address the recent revelation that it failed to properly secure the private signing key for its flagship console — leading to clever tinkerers producing third-party firmware that allows unofficial software and illegitimately downloaded games to run on unmodified hardware — by looking to the PC retail market for solutions.

Unlike the PS3, the PC doesn't have a hardware DRM system built in to it — despite attempts by groups like the Trusted Computing Group, formerly the Trusted Computer Platform Alliance, to introduce such a thing — relying instead on software-based DRM and a surprisingly old-fashioned guarantee of a game's uniqueness: a serial key.

Submission + - WikiLeaks Twitter Spying May Break EU Privacy Law (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: A group of European MPs will today push EU bosses to say if the US government breached European privacy laws by snooping on Twitter users with links to whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) will today pose an oral question to the European Commission, seeking clarification from the US on a subpoena demanding the micro-blogging site hand over users' account details.
Idle

Submission + - Wikileaks' Assange Charged With Treason (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been accused of "treason" by a Florida man seeking damages for distress caused by the site's revelations about the US Government.

David Pitchford, a Florida trailer park resident, names Assange and WikiLeaks as defendants in a personal injury suit filed with the Florida Southern District Court in Miami.

In the complaint filed on 6th January, Pitchford alleges that Assange's negligence has caused "hypertension", "depression" and "living in fear of being stricken by another heart attack and/or stroke" as a result of living "in fear of being on the brink of another nuclear [sic] WAR".

Just for good measure, it also alleges that Assange and WikiLeaks are guilty of "terorism [sic], espionage and treason".
Idle

Submission + - AMD offers women patronising geek dating advice (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Blacklaw
Blacklaw writes: AMD has decided to diverge from its core competency of integrated circuits and move into the dating field with a handy guide for girls to land themselves a geeky guy.
In a blog post written by Leslie Sobon, the company's vice president of marketing, Sobon describes her life in the largely male-dominated world of technology as being "mostly surrounded by guys all day," but says: "I can tell you that — in general — technical guys are pretty cool," and offers advice on how girls can land a geek guy. Although clearly meant in a lighthearted way, Sobon's missive serves to patronise both her company's customers — who, we learn, are socially inept and bad dressers — and women, who apparently can't understand technology and need to find a nice man who can "fix the TV, your PC, and the sprinkler system" along with other magical items far too complex for the poor female brain to comprehend.
Hardware

Submission + - Marvell launches first triple-core hybrid ARM chip (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Blacklaw
Blacklaw writes: While other manufacturers are content to develop dual-core ARM processors, Marvell has gone one better — literally — with a new triple-core chip called the Armada 628.
The system-on-chip design, based on ARM's v7 MP series, features two dedicated 1.5GHz processing cores plus a third 624MHz core in a single application processor — making Marvell the first company to bring such a beast to market. While two of the cores are a pretty standard SMP setup, as seen in other dual-core ARM implementations, the third is a standalone processor designed for ultra-low-power draw. The idea behind such a design is that when the system is idle, or only running a low-performance application on a single thread, it can shut off the dual-core portion and save oodles of power.
Data Storage

Submission + - 64% of Gamers Prefer Physical Media (thinq.co.uk) 2

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Despite the advent of online game stores on all three major consoles, most console gamers apparently still prefer to hoard collections of gaming discs than download games. A recent survey conducted by Ipsos in the UK revealed that 64 per cent of the 1,000 users polled would rather have games on physical discs, while only 25 per cent would prefer digital copies. In the survey, 55 per cent of those polled said price was the key factor in determining their interest in downloading games, while 27 per cent said the wanted games available online before they were in the shops.

Ipsos' director Ian Bramley explained that "Interest absolutely drops away when you get to the types of pricing that you might charge for a new physical disc. People's perceptions are that they're not prepared to pay as much for digital content — they make the connection that it's not a physical disc and therefore it should be cheaper." At the top of the list of concerns about digital downloads was the lack pf physical ownership, with 35 per cent of those polled saying they just preferred to own a physical disc. Meanwhile, 33 per cent said they were worried they'd lose their games and 20 per cent said they like to own a physical collection of games.
Television

Submission + - TV business kisses HDMI goodbye (thinq.co.uk) 1

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: HDMI's short-lived reign over the TV cable racks could soon be over, thanks to a new usurper that combines several connections into a standard Cat5e/6 network cable with an RJ-45 connector. Designed by a coalition of consumer electronics manufacturers called the HDBaseT Alliance, which includes Sony, Samsung, LG and Valens, HDBaseT promises to not only carry video and audio signals, but also provide a network connection, a USB signal and even electricity using a single cable. The Alliance predicts that we'll start seeing the first HDBaseT equipment creeping into the shops later this year, but says the bigger wave of adoption will occur later in 2011.
Games

Submission + - Nintendo 3DS GPU revealed (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Nintendo 3DS' GPU has just been revealed, and it's not made by Nvidia, ATI or even Imagination Technologies. Instead, Nintendo has signed up Japanese start-up Digital Media Professionals (DMP) in a deal that sees the company's PICA200 chip churning out the 3D visuals visuals. For the first time in Nintendo's history, the 3DS will feature a GPU with programmable shaders, rather than a fixed-function pipeline, meaning the 3DS is more graphically versatile than the Wii. Among the PICA200's features are 2x anti-aliasing, per-pixel lighting, subdivision primitives and soft shadows. As well as featuring DMP's own "Maestro" extensions, the PICA200 also fully supports OpenGL ES 1.1. The architecture supports four programmable vertex units and up to four pixel pipelines.
Technology

Submission + - Apple quietly goes after Mac Trojan with update (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Th'Inquisitor
Th'Inquisitor writes: Apple's latest update to Snow Leopard included software to protect Mac computers from a Trojan. Strangely, Apple didn't mention this fact in its release notes.

The malware opens a back door to a Mac that can allow hackers gain control of the machine and snoop about on it or turn it into a zombie.

"You have to wonder," said Graham Cluley, spokesman for web security Sophos, "whether their keeping quiet about an anti-malware security update like this was for marketing reasons."
Idle

Submission + - Over a third of the Internet is pornographic (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Th'Inquisitor
Th'Inquisitor writes: Pornography makes up 37 per cent of the total number of Web pages online, according to a new study published by Optenet, a SaaS provider.

According to the report, which looked at a representative sample of around four million extracted URLs, adult content on the Internet increased by 17 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009.

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