Friday, July 27, 2007

Realy nervy boy?! :D

Ohh, i hope my kids would't be so nervy.. ;)

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Huge Chinese piracy ring tackled


Windows Vista in shop, AP

The pirates pumped out fake versions of Windows Vista
Pirated software worth $500m (£250m) has been seized as the FBI shuts down a world-spanning piracy outfit.

Before the raids the Chinese counterfeiting syndicate was thought to have sold and distributed software worth more than $2bn.

The FBI and China's Public Security Bureau arrested 25 people during the two-week operation against the pirates.

Despite recent crackdowns, industry figures suggest that 82% of the software used in China is counterfeit.

Piracy probe

The FBI said it had been building up a case against the piracy syndicate for years before staging the raids on the software production plants in China's Guangdong province.

During the raids, dubbed Operation Summer Solstice, the FBI seized more than 290,000 CDs with a claimed market value of $500m.

The gang was known to be producing pirated versions of 13 of Microsoft's most popular programs including Windows Vista, XP and Server as well as Office 2003 and 2007.

The syndicate sold versions of these programs in eight languages including Croatian and Dutch.

In a statement Microsoft said vital information that helped to track down the pirates came from its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) scheme.

WGA forces users of some versions of Windows to validate their copy of the operating system with Microsoft when updating their software.

Microsoft said information gathered by WGA from more than 1,000 fake copies produced by the counterfeiters and sold around the world helped law enforcement agencies home in on the pirates. Fake software produced by the group was found in 27 countries.

"Countries around the world are expected to experience a significant decrease in the volume of counterfeit software as a direct result of this action," said Microsoft in its statement.

Sony up despite Playstation woes

PS3 boxes
Sony's PlayStation 3 launch was delayed
Sony profits for the April to June period have more than doubled as robust demand for its cameras and a weak yen offset losses at its games unit.

Net earnings for the first quarter at the electronics giant rose to 66.5bn yen ($552m; £269m), up from 32.3bn yen last year.

The fall in the Japanese currency against the US dollar and euro helped boost the firm's overseas earnings.

But its Playstation 3 console continued to struggle in a tough games market.

PS3 troubles

Problems with the company's next generation games console - designed to compete with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii - caused its launch to be delayed.

Despite Sony cutting the price of the PS3 in the US, sales of the system still significantly trail Nintendo's Wii machine. Sony's games division saw losses widen to 29.2bn yen.

Sony said it aimed to increase shipments of the PS3 to 11 million units by 2008. On Wednesday, Nintendo upgraded sales forecasts of its Wii console to 16.5 million machines for the year to March 2008, up from a previous forecast of 14 million.

Elsewhere, performance was strong in Sony's electronics division, which benefited from strong demand for Handycam video cameras and Bravia liquid crystal display (LCD) television sets.

With sales of conventional TV sets in decline, Sony faces a tough battle to win a share of the flat-panel market against LCD TV market leader Samsung Electronics.

Sony maintained its operating profit forecast for the year to March 2008 of 440bn yen. This is up sharply from 71.75bn yen in the 2006/07 financial year when it was hit by costs relating to the delayed launch of the PS3 and a recall of faulty laptop PC batteries.

Music Video "Umbrella" - Rihanna ft Jay-Z - 10 weeks aTop!

Realy awesome music video - Umbrella in the Top of United Kingdom is staying atop already 10 weeks!!!

Watch & feel it ;)

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Is "http://www2.clustrmaps.com" is down?!

When I'm going to view my page visits on http://www2.clustrmaps.com i get message like this:

"couldn't connect to the mysql server

the database is over-loaded at the moment, please try again later

http://worlds-greatest-questions.blogspot.com is not a ClustrMaps (reg or +) user"