PS3 Slim ready to ship in July?
According to the Taiwanese website UDN, and translated originally by Engadget, it appears the upcoming rumored PS3 Slim will be ready to ship by the end of July.
The report says the companies Foxconn and Pegatron are already working on the new model and will have the system built and ready to ship by the end of the month.
Last week, Arstechnica revealed they had information on an upcoming PS3 price cut set for August which would come alongside the launch of the PS3 Slim.
The PS3 Slim, if true, would only be marginally different than the current PS3, however sporting a much thinner body.
UK sees strong decline in DVD sales
The British Video Association has said today that despite a few recent good sellers such as Quantum of Solace, DVD revenue had fallen 14 percent with total sales volume falling 7.7 percent.
If the trend continues, the BVA says the UK will have its worst year for home video revenue since the 1980s.
Lavinia Carey, spokesperson for the BVA, adds that the high revenue drop can mainly be attributed to the recent bankruptcies of retailers Woolworths and Zavvi. “We’ve just seen 15 per cent of the retail market disappear,” says Carey, via Times Online.
Blu-ray was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary report, seeing a 231 percent increase in units sold. The BVA does add however that Blu-ray still only accounts for 3.1 million units sold, compared to 99.6 million for DVD (during the period).
Jammie Rasset-Thomas to appeal damage award
Jammie Thomas-Rasset will be appealing the $1.92 million judgement against her in the first RIAA file sharing case ever decided by a jury.
At issue will be the constitutionality of awarding $80,000 per song. US copyright sets minimum damages at $750 per song, but allows up to $150,000 for “willful infringement.”
Attorney Joe Sibley told CNET News “She wants to take the issue up on appeal on the constitutionality of the damages. That’s one of the main arguments–that the damages are disproportionate to any actual harm.”
Although the courts have previously ruled that punitive damages in excess of ten times the actual damage caused are a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution, there’s no precedent on whether statutory damages are similarly limited.
The Department of Justice has already shown they are willing to defend the damages. Earlier this year a lawyer from the DOJ Federal Programs Branch, which is headed by former RIAA lawyer Ian Gershengorn did exactly that in another case.
Assuming Ms. Thomas-Rasset can afford to continue her defense, this case could go as high as the US Supreme Court. Whether they will agree to hear the case is anybody’s guess.
The Pirate Bay adds ‘user deletion’
Earlier today we reported that the infamous public torrent tracker The Pirate Bay had been sold to the software company Global Gaming Factory X, who then decided to shut down the tracker and remove its torrents.
Responding very quickly to user requests for it, the admins of the Pirate Bay have now added a “user deletion” option for those users who do not want any part of the new “legal” Pirate Bay.
Says the blog:
“We are going to build a user deletion interface later today. Many people have asked about having their account removed and we will not force anyone to stay on of course.
However, we also want to point out that we have no logs of anything, no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept). So no need to be worried for safety. We always care for that.
It also feels a bit sad to see the comments on the previous blog entry. We understand that you’re upset. But we have reasons to do this that we cannot ignore. We need to keep the site going and this is the only working alternative. We cannot finance the growth of the site anymore and we cannot back down. The only way is up and this is the only route to that place.
The support we had, is support we still need. We’ve been fighting for years for you; and yes; you have supported us in that endeavor. We still need you, even if you abandon the site. The important thing is that you keep sharing and keep on saving the internets. We will try to do that, but right now, we need and deserve a break. Some things needs to be reborn and rebooted. Let’s make this into something good!”
The Pirate Bay tracker to shut down
As we reported earlier today, The Pirate Bay is being sold to another Swedish company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF). The publicly listed software company stated that the acquisition will have an effect on the business model of The Pirate Bay which has been known to be the most popular BitTorrent site on the Internet. In addition to these changes some less expected changes are going to happen too.
Peter Sunde, co-founder of TPB, has told TorrentFreak that The Pirate Bay will be shutting down their tracker and remove torrent files from their servers. After closing the tracker The Pirate Bay will use the torrents of an upcoming third party service which will introduce an API accessible by other torrent sites as well.
It’s still unclear how GGF intends to compensate the content providers and copyright owners. Neither has the company revealed further information how the acquisited Peerialism and its file-sharing technology will affect The Pirate Bay.
New Firefox, Nero now available
The popular all-in-one CDR / DVDR / Blu-ray application Nero has updated to version v9.4.13.2b and with it brings alot of new changes:
* InCD (6.4.11.1)
* InCD features operate with Administrator logon rights only.
* InCD 5.5 is able to write onto DVD-RW formatted by itself.
* Nero Burning ROM (9.4.13.2)
* The error message: “could not get ClassID” is no longer displayed after launching Nero Burning ROM.
* “Continue multisession” projects are displayed in the correct size.
* Volume is correct when using the “Save Tracks” option (MP3 only).
* Nero CoverDesigner (4.4.8.0)
* Nero CoverDesigner startup icon is available in both Nero Burning ROM and Nero Express.
* Nero CoverDesigner can be started after updating Nero 9.
* Nero CoverDesigner can be started through Nero Vision.
[More]>>
Flash headed to Android phones soon
In a surprising announcement today, Bsquare has said they will be porting Flash Lite 3 to Android phones by the “late Q3,” eliminating the need for users to wait for the official Flash 10 port which still does not have a release date.
Bsquare vice president of global sales Larry Stapleton added that the browser plug-in should be available for current Android phone owners as well.
“Our intent is to try to get these guys to market faster by using this base port,” Stapleton added.
Flash Lite 3 can render Flash Player 8 files meaning files that require 9 or 10 will not work on the handsets. However, Stapleton says “a large subset of what’s on the Web today will render in a pleasing way for the end consumer.”
Sony to bring backwards compatibility back to PS3?
According to a new Siliconera report, Sony has patented a new method that would allow the Cell processor of the PlayStation 3 to fully emulate the Emotion Engine, bringing full backwards compatibility for PSX and PS2 games.
The patent was filed in December of last year, and Spencer Yip adds: “Figure 2 from the patent is a schematic drawing of how the system works. Figure 3A is a drawing of the PlayStation 2’s chipset. Figure 3B is the emotion engine. Figure 4 is where the whole story gets interesting!”It’s ‘an example of a host system based on a cell processor that may be configured to emulate the target system.’ The target is figure 3B, the Emotion Engine.” (Source and pictures at the end of the article)
Although the patent may end up being nothing, but it could also possibly mean that a new hardware model may include the backwards compatibility, possibly even the oft rumored PS3 Slim.
We will certainly keep you updated.
Siliconera report with original pics:
Palm Pre selling well
According to new data from Charter Equity Research analyst Edward Snyder, sales of the Palm Pre are beating all expectations, with the number almost doubling all previous analyst estimates.
The highly anticipated smartphone was launched the first week of June and analysts conservatively estimated 150,000 units sold so far. Snyder says the number is set to break 300,000 soon.
Palm is producing 15,000 units every day, Snyder adds and expects one million sales in the device’s launch quarter.
Palm has had two straight years of quarterly losses but hype over the Palm has sent the company’s stock to a 52-week high at $16.50 USD.
The Pirate Bay adds ‘user deletion’
Earlier today we reported that the infamous public torrent tracker The Pirate Bay had been sold to the software company Global Gaming Factory X, who then decided to shut down the tracker and remove its torrents.
Responding very quickly to user requests for it, the admins of the Pirate Bay have now added a “user deletion” option for those users who do not want any part of the new “legal” Pirate Bay.
Says the blog:
“We are going to build a user deletion interface later today. Many people have asked about having their account removed and we will not force anyone to stay on of course.
However, we also want to point out that we have no logs of anything, no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept). So no need to be worried for safety. We always care for that.
It also feels a bit sad to see the comments on the previous blog entry. We understand that you’re upset. But we have reasons to do this that we cannot ignore. We need to keep the site going and this is the only working alternative. We cannot finance
the growth of the site anymore and we cannot back down. The only way is up and this is the only route to that place.
The support we had, is support we still need. We’ve been fighting for years for you; and yes; you have supported us in that endeavor. We still need you, even if you abandon the site. The important thing is that you keep sharing and keep on saving the internets. We will try to do that, but right now, we need and deserve a break. Some things needs to be reborn and rebooted. Let’s make this into something good!”
