By Matt Hamblen October 2, 2009
Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by a Michigan high school student and an California academic whose electronic copies of George Orwell's novel, 1984 were deleted from their Kindle devices in mid-July. Michael Aschenbrener, the attorney for student Justin Gawronski, 17, and Tony Bruguier, said the two men are donating the settlement monies to charity. "Neither will receive a flat cent," he said today in a telephone interview. On July 16, Amazon had removed the novels 1984 and Animal Farm from its Kindle e-book store, as well as from users' digital lockers and Kindle e-book readers after learning that they had been placed in the store by a third party that didn't have the rights to the books. The Amazon move ignited a firestorm of debate about customer rights with electronic books. Less than a week after removing the books from users' Kindle devices, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a strong public apology, calling the company's handling of illegally sold copies of the e-books "stupid [and] thoughtless."
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Friday, October 2, 2009
Apple tablet won't be just an e-reader, argues analyst
By Gregg Keizer October 2, 2009
Analysts split today in their take on recent reports that Apple's long-rumored tablet will stress the device's e-book capabilities, saying that the company's plan for the "iPod Touch on steroids" would depend on the price tag. Earlier this week, the popular gadget blog Gizmodo cited unnamed sources who claimed that Apple was in talks with several media companies, including the New York Times, to negotiate content deals for its unannounced-but-expected tablet. "[Apple isn't] just going for e-books and mags," Gizmodo's Brian Lam wrote Wednesday. "They're aiming to redefine print." Not so fast, said one analyst. "It's more than just an e-reader," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research who follows Apple's moves. "It's an application platform, it's a game and social gaming platform. It certainly will be an e-reader, that will be part of its ecosystem, but that won't be all it is." Gottheil, who six months ago touted the idea that Apple would deliver a tablet best described as an "iPod Touch on steroids," stuck to that reasoning today. "It will use the iPhone OS, or a modified version of it," Gottheil said, echoing something iLounge.com said it heard from a reliable source this week.
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Analysts split today in their take on recent reports that Apple's long-rumored tablet will stress the device's e-book capabilities, saying that the company's plan for the "iPod Touch on steroids" would depend on the price tag. Earlier this week, the popular gadget blog Gizmodo cited unnamed sources who claimed that Apple was in talks with several media companies, including the New York Times, to negotiate content deals for its unannounced-but-expected tablet. "[Apple isn't] just going for e-books and mags," Gizmodo's Brian Lam wrote Wednesday. "They're aiming to redefine print." Not so fast, said one analyst. "It's more than just an e-reader," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research who follows Apple's moves. "It's an application platform, it's a game and social gaming platform. It certainly will be an e-reader, that will be part of its ecosystem, but that won't be all it is." Gottheil, who six months ago touted the idea that Apple would deliver a tablet best described as an "iPod Touch on steroids," stuck to that reasoning today. "It will use the iPhone OS, or a modified version of it," Gottheil said, echoing something iLounge.com said it heard from a reliable source this week.
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Nvidia disables hardware PhysX for GeForce, Radeon tandems
by Cyril Kowaliski October 2, 2009
Hoping to grab a new Radeon HD 5850 and use an old GeForce to accelerate PhysX effects in games? Too bad; newer Nvidia drivers won't let you use hardware PhysX acceleration unless you're using a GeForce for graphics, too. A member of the NGOHQ forums first broke the story a few weeks back, quoting the following explanation from Nvidia's Customer Care department: Physx is an open software standard any company can freely develop hardware or software that supports it. Nvidia supports GPU accelerated Physx on NVIDIA GPUs while using NVIDIA GPUs for graphics. NVIDIA performs extensive Engineering, Development, and QA work that makes Physx a great experience for customers. For a variety of reasons - some development expense some quality assurance and some business reasons NVIDIA will not support GPU accelerated Physx with NVIDIA GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non- NVIDIA GPUs. I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused but I hope you can understand. The limitation applies to GeForce 186 and newer driver releases. Also, it mainly concerns folks running Windows 7 (either in pre-release form or otherwise), since Windows Vista's Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 specification doesn't support running multiple GPUs with different drivers simultaneously. Microsoft removed that limitation in Windows 7's WDDM 1.1 spec.
Read more here -->Link
Hoping to grab a new Radeon HD 5850 and use an old GeForce to accelerate PhysX effects in games? Too bad; newer Nvidia drivers won't let you use hardware PhysX acceleration unless you're using a GeForce for graphics, too. A member of the NGOHQ forums first broke the story a few weeks back, quoting the following explanation from Nvidia's Customer Care department: Physx is an open software standard any company can freely develop hardware or software that supports it. Nvidia supports GPU accelerated Physx on NVIDIA GPUs while using NVIDIA GPUs for graphics. NVIDIA performs extensive Engineering, Development, and QA work that makes Physx a great experience for customers. For a variety of reasons - some development expense some quality assurance and some business reasons NVIDIA will not support GPU accelerated Physx with NVIDIA GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non- NVIDIA GPUs. I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused but I hope you can understand. The limitation applies to GeForce 186 and newer driver releases. Also, it mainly concerns folks running Windows 7 (either in pre-release form or otherwise), since Windows Vista's Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 specification doesn't support running multiple GPUs with different drivers simultaneously. Microsoft removed that limitation in Windows 7's WDDM 1.1 spec.
Read more here -->Link
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