EA doubles layoffs

by Taylor Flatt on December 21st, 2008 at 5:32 pm EDT - 201 views

As the US economy continues to fall, the gaming industry is beginning to feel the effects.  EA is no execption and has announced that they are going to be laying off twice the people it projected at upwards to 10% of their workforce.  The layoffs will equate to about 1000 workers out of their 10,000 workforce.  EA has also commented that they will be shutting down some of their studios most notably their Black Box game studio.  With all the layoffs, they are hoping to save upwards of $120 million.

Although EA has a long record of closing studios, it seems that they have had a great year with the infamous release of SPORE and Mass Effect.  Surprisingly however, EA has had a terrible time trying to get rid of their holiday stock which was the main reason of doubling the layoffs.  But with these layoffs, EA reassures us that it would continue to invest into mobile and online games.

Source: NYTimes

- 0 Comments

Severed Subsea Cables Disrupt Internet Access Around Europe/Middle East

by Bradley Wint on December 21st, 2008 at 4:38 pm EDT - 220 views

For many Internet users in the European, Asian and Middle Eastern regions, browsing the web has become a nightmare after several connection failures. Apparently, 3 of 4 subsea fibre optic backbone communication cables have been severed, causing major cellular and Internet blackouts in these regions.

France Telecom reported that the  FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 cables in Egypt were severed, but the reason is still yet to be determined. Normally one of these cables are destroyed on a yearly basis by ships or seismic activity, but having 3 destroyed at around the same time is a cause for concern. The 4 cables in this region serve communication links between Europe and Middle East countries, as well as Asia. The telecoms firm will be sending ships to repair the fibre optic lines, but they don’t expect full service to be restored until December 31st.

The blackouts have severely disrupted business activity, especially on the Stock Exchange. Statistics also show that 65% of India’s networks are down, with other Middle Eastern countries feeling a lot of the brunt. For many of you out there, if you have been having problems accessing certain eastern based websites, don’t expect to see any recovery until the end of the year.

Source: BBC News

- 0 Comments

EA’s PC Games Hit Steam

by Bradley Wint on December 21st, 2008 at 2:41 pm EDT - 220 views

Electronic Arts (EA) has partnered with Valve to make some of their more recent titles available via the popular game purchasing client, Steam. Some of the first games being made available are Spore, Need for Speed Undercover, Mass Effect, EA Sports FIFA Manager 2009 and much more. The partnership between the two companies will now allow for people anywhere in the globe to purchase PC titles via the Steam client.

“We are pleased to extend our holiday titles to gamers worldwide via Steam — a revolutionary technology that is one of the game industry’s most successful digital distribution services,” – EA COO, John Pleasants

Steam has been a popular tool for other companies to distribute their games, including some top names such as Activisio, SimBin, Atari and others.  Check out the Steam website for more details.

Source: Gamesutra

- 1 Comment

RIAA Ceases Lawsuits And Cut Down On Internet Instead

by Bradley Wint on December 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm EDT - 207 views

The RIAA has taken a totally new approach to the fight against music piracy. Instead of taking the pirates to court and spending lots of time and money on the stand, they have decided to work with several Internet Service Providers to crack down on these music thieves. The ISP will monitor network traffic and if a customer has been deemed to be uploading illegal music, they would be warned on a three strike basis. During these strikes, the customer’s Internet supply would either be capped or totally shut off completely.

These efforts are aimed mainly as Peer to Peer file sharers, and is one of the smartest and simplest moves by both the RIAA and the ISPs. Eventually there would be few ways to get around it, because there are only a certain number of Internet companies a person could sign up for (or leech off as the case may be). At the end of the day, music has become very cheap, so why not spend a bit of cash to support your favourite artist.

Source: LA Times

- 1 Comment

China Blocks NYTimes Website

by Taylor Flatt on December 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am EDT - 232 views

The Chinese government has begun blocking access to the NYTimes website this weekend. Although no real explanation has been made, they have released a statement concerning the matter, “Concerning your particular question, we’re not really familiar with the details,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. “Web site maintenance is not within the job purview of the Foreign Ministry.” While the government is refusing the answer these questions, they seem to be going back to the ways they were before the Olympics.

With their restrictions and vague statements, what more are we to expect from a government that is looking to surpress the media from their countrymen? Although the website is not blocked throughout the whole country, it is however, blocked in places like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

I will stay with this story and alert you of any updates that might come of this from the Chinese government concerning the matter. Hopefully they will release the ban of the website and allow their people once more to view one of the biggest media sites in the world.

Source: NYTimes

- 2 Comments

Internet Explorer Security Flaw

by Taylor Flatt on December 20th, 2008 at 9:11 pm EDT - 392 views

Recently, Microsoft has released statements proclaiming a flawed Internet Explorer. Furthermore, they have urged their Internet Explorer users to move to other browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc) to avoid possible hacking. The backdoor into IE is not only present but is being exploited, ”This one was being exploited. Especially once Microsoft announced this vulnerability the bad guys just zeroed in on it” says David Greenberg, a security engineer at IUPUI’s computer lab.

The one thing that is really scary about this backdoor is not the fact that you can be hacked, but that you can be hacked without downloading a thing.  The hacker just dives into your computer and steals sensitive information like cc info and personal emails. Many people may not even realize this is even happening until it is too late and they have been infected.

Update: Just a little bit ago, Microsoft has finished their updates. You should be getting your update via Automatic Updates but if you have disabled them then you can download the patch via Microsoft.com.

- 4 Comments