Bungie Leaving Microsoft!? (RUMOR)

A huge rumor is floating around that Halo developer Bungie may be seperating from its owner Microsoft. However it is based on a email someone claims to have received from "A friend of mine who has someone close that works at Bungie". According to the email Microsoft is letting Bungie split as a thank you for the billion $ Halo franchise, with Microsoft keeping the rights to it. This rumour seems way too crazy to be true, as the loss for Microsoft would be huge. It's in the news and it's causing uproar all over the internet as it's doing the rounds.

seattlepi

The email is as follows :

"So heres my big secret. You should google Bungie + Microsoft + separation this week.
You know that big ol BILLION dollar franchise Bungie has created for Microsoft, to show their appreciate Microsoft is letting Bungie leave. Of course Microsoft gets to keep all rights to the Halo franchise, but as today Bungie no longer part of Microsoft. Ask anyone who works there to search the global address book, they're no longer in there. Microsoft was supposed to release the press release today but if they wait till the 10/6 the impact wont effect the quarterly results. However today is the actual official date and the day the NDAs expire, however you still didn't hear this from me."

"Apparently MS just wants Bungie to make Halo for the rest of their natural days, and Bungie doesn't like how MS is constantly trying to "handle" everything they do; the way they market their games, the way they interact with their fans (basically the fact that they do appreciate their fans), and how stingie they are with the profits (comparable to the rest of the industry). So as of today they are their own independent entity. They'll probably make Halo 4 for Microsoft, however hey are also free to create new intellectual properties for whatever system they want. (Even though they prefer the xbox platform)"

"What a way to say thank you."

Considering that Microsoft owns Bungie (they paid $50m USD for Bungie)I'd take this with two grains of salt.

PlayStation 3 getting holiday makeover!

Well this one has been through the rumor mill however it seems that this may have some legs to stand on.



From arstechnica.com:

In the meantime, you can see what Sony has done: the company has focused on reducing the cost of building the PS3 while also closely watching how sales of lower-priced units are doing. The time is ripe for a new PS3 model to hit the scene, and we strongly believe that the company is about to launch a $399 PS3 in time for the holiday season. We've been hearing rumors to this effect for some time, but now the evidence of a new PlayStation 3 configuration is almost undeniable: an FCC filing details a new model number for the system.

What this new model number means is impossible to know for sure; the FCC filing leaves out pictures to "avoid premature release of sensitive information prior to marketing or release of the product to the public." The product description tells us that there is no difference in the wireless configuration, CPU, or Bluetooth aspects of this new PlayStation 3. The information that details the differences has been conveniently left out of the released paperwork, for the aforementioned reason.

We also have a date to pin this information to: our sources tell us that the $399 PlayStation 3 hardware will launch on, or before, November 16. We're confident in this information, as our sources in this area have always given us accurate information in the past. The "sensitive information" in the FCC filing will go public 45 days from September 4, unless something changes.

In the race for supremacy Sony has fallen behind against the XBOX 360, many people have held back mainly due to price of the Sony Playstation 3 whilst others are not impressed with the games currently available.

One thing is for certain, I hope these PS3's (if the hype is true) will hit the shores of Australia sometime early next year as I'd honestly love to pick one up @ around the $650AUD mark like I did the XBOX 360 when that too retailed for $400USD ($650AUD).

More as it happens...

iPhone issues after software upgrade as promised.

An Apple software update is disabling iPhones that have been unlocked by owners who wanted to choose which mobile network to use.

It was announced earlier this week Apple said a planned update would leave the device "permanently inoperable".

Thousands of owners hacked their iPhones to unlock it for use with other mobile carriers and to run "unsupported" programs.

Apple requires iPhone owners to take out a lengthy contract with AT&T in the United States but there are a number of programs on the net that unlock the device for use with other networks.

What is truly upsetting is legitimate customers (who have not hacked their iPhones in any way) are also having problems. Many are blogging about it whilst others are posting on Apple's forums that the update is deleting contacts information, as well as photos and music.

People diss Microsoft for the things they do but at least MS have a different stance with hackers/pirates.

Comments are welcome.

Funny : Dog swallows Wiimote

Not exactly noteworthy news but I love the Wii and this made me laugh...

A family in the US town of Loveland became concerned when their dog started vomiting blood - something that the first aid chief on our floor will tell you "ain't quite right."

So naturally the dog was whisked off to the vet, where X-Rays revealed what appeared to be an old TV remote.

Vet-induced vomiting revealed that there were pieces of TV remote inside the dog's stomach, but there was something else in the pooch's tummy as well...

"The Vet started massaging the dogs belly and it just came flying out of the dog," said Marie Becknell. "I knew what it was right away by the color and shape of it. It was my son's video game remote." Yep, the dog had swallowed the boy's Wii Remote.

We're sure you'll agree that this is one talented dog, but instead of having him run around the living room, hilariously flailing the bat in Wii Sports, the family had the Remote removed.

"The dog spent the night at the Vet and boy's punishment for leaving the controller out was two weeks allowance to replace the Wii remote," said Mrs. Becknell. Don't him leave the SixAxis lying about...

Source



One has to ask, did the family have to move the dog around to play the games or see that the Wiimote still worked :)

Adobe Continues Blu-ray Support.

Adobe has announced that the latest version of their popular PC video editing software - Adobe Premiere Elements 4 - supports Blu-ray content. Adobe first announced Blu-ray support with the Apple OS-X version of this software, and has continued that support for this newest release. The software will optimize your video to Blu-ray standards in order to guarantee the highest video quality. Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is available now.

For even more on this.

Perform a Full Manual Defrag of Your HDD under Vista.

If you have tried doing a defragmentation of your hard disk under Windows Vista, you would have noticed that the defrag utility does not really give you any detailed information about your hard disk fragmentation level, show you the defragmentation progress while defragging and in certain situations even defragment when you ask it to.

This guide shows you how you can perform a full defrag of your hard disk under Vista and get at least a basic report on your hard disk fragmentation before and after defragmentation.

What's Happening Here

There are a number of changes between Windows Vista's defragmenter and XP's defrag tool. In general, Vista's defragger is designed for the average user and is thus tuned for automatic behind-the-scenes work: by default, the defrag utility is scheduled to run weekly. It defragments all the partitions on all your hard disks automatically. Unlike the Windows XP defragmentation tool however, it will only defragment files with fragments smaller than 64 MB on NTFS file systems. The lack of any useful user interface in the Vista defrag utility is consistent with this design decision of having an automated defragger running behind the scenes without user intervention.

Before you get too upset, let me say that this is a generally useful setting for the average user. Let's face it, if you are reading this, you are not an average user. Many users I know don't defragment their hard disks. They don't even know the concept, let alone how to get it done or what use it may serve. The default Vista setting is sensible for such users - a weekly schedule is more than adequate: too frequent and the constant defragmentation causes additional wear and tear on the hard disk for very little additional gain. And for most people, not moving file fragments if they are more than 64 MB is a good compromise - it speeds up the whole defragging process, and the fragments are large enough so that in most cases they don't cause significant slowdowns in the system.

Manual Defragmentation

There are of course reasons why you might want to override this default mechanism. For example, a full defragmentation of the hard disk may speed up certain hard disk backup operations. If you're doing it on a large scale with many computers, the time savings when backing up a properly defragged hard disk compared to one where the files are broken into many fragments may be significant. Another possible reason might be if you are capturing video on your computer and don't want any frames to be skipped; if the disk is fragmented without a contiguous free space for the entire video file, the hard disk head may have to skip over occupied sectors in the middle of recording, causing your recording software to skip frames.

To get Vista's defragger to give you some information about your hard disk, and to control which hard disk or partition it defragments, you will need to use the command line defragmentation utility. It will still not give you any feedback while defragmenting, just as the GUI version of the defragmenter will not, but at least you can get information on the fragmentation level of your hard disk, control whether to defragment even if the file fragments are larger than 64 MB, and control which partition or hard disk to defragment.

To use the command line defrag tool in Windows Vista, you have to run the Command Prompt as an administrator. In Vista, this is not automatic even if you are logged in as the administrator. Click the Windows button (previously the Start button in earlier versions of Windows), the All Programs menu item and the Accessories menu item. Right click the "Command Prompt" button and select "Run as administrator". A command prompt window will appear. Everything you run in this Window will be run with administrator rights.

1. To view a file fragmentation analysis of (say) your C: drive, type:

defrag c: -a -v

The "-a" parameter tells the defragger to perform a fragmentation analysis. The "-v" option tells it to be verbose in its report. If you want a report on drive D: or some other drive, substitute that drive letter in place of c:.

Be aware that defrag may tell you that you have no fragmented files even if you have some. On NTFS partitions, the reporting function of defrag does not consider fragmented files with fragments greater than 64 MB as fragmented. If you need truly detailed information, you may have to consider getting a third party defragmenter such as those listed on the Free Defragmentation Utilities page on thefreecountry.com.

2. To defragment a particular drive, say C:, type:

defrag c: -v -r

The "-r" option tells the defragmentation utility to treat files that are fragmented with 64 MB fragments or larger as though they are not fragmented. This partial defragmentation is the default for "defrag", and it's the only way the GUI defragmenter in Vista works.

You can also force the defragmenter to defragment everything. That is, even if the file fragments are larger than 64MB, the Vista defragmenter will still attempt to put the file into contiguous sectors. To do this, run the defragger with the following options:

defrag c: -v -w

As you have probably have guessed, "-w" tells the Vista defrag tool to do a full defragmentation. All file fragments will be consolidated where possible.

Source

I should point out something not mentioned within the source from where this came, that Microsoft has corrected this issue with Windows Vista SP1-Beta.

Vista SP1 is now available for download on Connect.

For those who have made it into the beta program on Connect,

Build 6001.16659.070916-1443 has been posted in both x86 and x64 versions!

Source: In-House

vista service pack 1 is now available for download on connect

Windows Vista SP1 Beta (6001-16659-070916-1443) Client and ClientN for X86 and X64 English

9/24/2007

9,625.54 MB

6001.16659.070916-1443_x86fre_Client_en-us-FB1CFRE_EN_DVD.iso

6001.16659.070916-1443_amd64fre_Client_en-us-FB1CXFRE_EN_DVD.iso


EXE Files:

Wave1_Windows6.0-KB936330-X64.exe 1,778.91 MB
Wave1_Windows6.0-KB936330-X86.exe 1,308.64 MB

More Info