According to Microsoft CFO Peter Klein, the software giant has sold over 90 million copies of the Windows 7 operating system.

Windows 7 hit retail shelves in October and has critically been a success.

Adds the official Microsoft blog post: "We're humbled and excited that people are responding so positively to Windows 7 - our customers have made it the fastest selling operating system in history."

Last month, Microsoft said Windows 7 demand had given the company record quarterly revenue, with high demand expected to continue.

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RealNetworks has announced that they have settled their outstanding lawsuits with the major Hollywood studios over their Real DVD ripping software, effectively killing the product off after making just 2700 sales.

Additionally, Real will pay $4.5 million to pay off the legal costs of the litigation.

"We are pleased to put this litigation behind us," adds Bob Kimball, president and acting CEO for Real. "This is another step toward fulfilling our commitment to simplify our company and focus on our core businesses. Until this dispute, Real had always enjoyed a productive working relationship with Hollywood. With this litigation resolved, I hope that in the future we can find mutually beneficial ways to use Real technology to bring Hollywood's great work to consumers."

The settlement also terms a permanent injunction that will block RealDVD and similar technologies forever from sale in the US or abroad.

The $30 USD software application allowed users to make a copy of their DVDs and it play it back on their PCs, allowing for, what Real thought, were legal backups. Clearly, Hollywood did not agree, despite the fact that Real's backups also included DRM to stop sharing of the backups.

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Topeka, Kansas mayor Bill Bunten has announced today that the city will temporarily be renamed Google, in an effort to get the search giant to bring their proposed 1000Mbit free Internet to the city, via the "Fiber for Communities" program.

"It's just fun. We're having a good time of it," says Bunten. "There's a lot of good things that are going on in our city."

Cities were given a March 26th deadline to explain to Google why they are interested in the broadband, and Google will then choose a couple of cities for the pilot project, with no more than 500,000 in population total.

When asked if they would make the name permanent if Google invested in them, Bunten laughed.

"Oh, heavens no, Topeka? We are very proud of our city and Topeka is an Indian word which means 'a good place to grow potatoes.' We're not going to change that."

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FileShareFreak has a very interesting report out today about Cinavia DRM, which is a new audio watermarking technology that takes aim at pirates, and those trying to playback movie downloads via their PlayStation 3s.

The site says the watermarking works by "comparing the source of the audio to the format in which a movie was released (ie theatrical or commercial disc), and if the watermarked audio source detects a difference, the movie will either be mute (but most likely not play at all)."

To date, it has been found in a TS version of "The Wolfman" that has been popular via P2P and torrent sites.

"Movies protected by Cinavia technology carry inaudible codes embedded by the copyright owner in their audio tracks that indicate where and how they are allowed to be used. For example, movies that are being released to theaters can carry a Cinavia code that indicates that they are supposed to be duplicated by professional replicators and played back on professional projection equipment only," reads the official site.

The TS version of Wolfman, which uses "line" audio recorded through a headphone jack, had the watermark, and when added to the camera source, the audio did not match (it was searching for theatrical release) and is therefore muted when played back on Blu-ray players and the PS3, which have Cinavia DRM supported.

You can check if your Blu-ray player has the DRM check built-in here, but be noted that ALL new BD players will have it as of the Q1 2010.

Of course, if you are playing the files back on your DVD player or PC, you won't have a problem, as there are none that have Cinavia detectors.

Likely, hackers will find away around this watermark DRM, but for now, the cat-and-mouse game is on.

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A couple of days ago we reported that iPad manufacturer Foxconn was having an "unspecified production problem," and there might be shortages of the tablet in March.

The report came from an investor note by Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who said Apple was hoping to ship 1 million, but might only have 300,000 available by launch in late March. Misek even said launch could be pushed back until mid-April, until 1 million units were available.

Today, Taiwanese component makers have denied those rumors, saying their supplies are on schedule.

"Our supplies are on schedule and Foxconn should be able to ship 600,000-700,000 iPads in March and one million units in April," reads the Digitimes report.

They also do not expect Apple to delay the launch.

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Last year, The Pirate Bay infamously got "purchased" by little known company Global Gaming Factory for $7.8 million, however the deal never went through.

It appears, (via TF), that GGF had an even more ambitious offer in the works, 20 million euro for giant torrent indexer Mininova.

Today, it was revealed, from sources close to GGF and Mininova including CEO Hans Pandeya, that a deal was set in place for "no less than 20 million euros," but fell through when Mininova lost its court appeal in the case brought against it by anti-piracy agency BREIN.

"I'm going to buy Mininova too and eliminate all the competition," Pandeya had told one-time partner Wayne Rosso before the appeal fell through. Clearly however, Pandeya could not have afforded Mininova, as he couldn't afford Pirate Bay.

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Posted through the official channels, Apple has a new job listing posted which all but confirms that the company is looking to expand the iPad iBookstore globally.

The listing, reported by macrumors, is for a manager in the "Asia Pacific & Canada iBooks division."

The listing says: "The role includes: working with management, regionally and in Cupertino to determine strategies and priorities for iBooks in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries; identifying content providers to target, establish and develop relationships; working with legal and production teams to finalize relationships and secure content; and coordinate launches with partners, production, and marketing. This role will also be responsible for marketing the books offering on the iBooks store by coordinating with Apple's production teams, the marketing team, and the production and marketing teams of partners.
The successful employee holding the position will be based in either Markham, Ontario (outside of Toronto) or Sydney, Australia."

Overall, Apple is also looking for publisher account managers for the iBookstore, domestically.

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According to a new NPD report, gamers spend the most time online via the Xbox 360 compared to rival consoles, averaging 7.3 hours per week.

PC gamers came in second at 6.6 hours per week, and the PS3 came third at 5.8 hours per week.

Overall, hours spent weekly on online games has increased 10 percent year-on-year, from 7.3 hours in 2008 to 8 hours in 2009.

Additionally, 20 percent of all games bought by online gamers were digital downloads, up from 19 percent in 2008.

Adds NPD Group industry analyst Anita Frazier: "The installed base of video game systems continues to grow, the platforms available to play games continue to expand and the options for content acquisition have never been greater, especially online. And yet, effective monetization of many forms of online gaming continues to be a topic of much debate and discussion within the industry."

The data was collected from 18,872 online gamers.

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Argos has "sort of" entered the pre-owned games trade in the United Kingdom. The catalogue-driven retailer is trialing a system where customers get vouchers in return for certain pre-owned video games. Only 27 of the chain's 735 stores are taking part for now, and the company has no plan for expanding the trial yet.

Only selected PS3, Xbox 360, DS and Wii titles are being accepted -- all listed here -- and they have already been assigned a value. Grand Theft Auto IV will get you £11 in vouchers, while Assassin's Creed II will get you £22.

"Argos can confirm it is trialling a trade-in service for video games in a few stores in the North East region commencing in March 2010," an Argos spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz.

"Customers participating in the trial will receive the trade-in value in Argos gift vouchers giving the customers the choice to purchase any of the 18,000-plus products we sell. We have no firm plans regarding the length of the trial and no future roll out decision will be taken until the trial is concluded."

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The movie industry has been hoping that digital downloads of movies will make up for lost revenue of falling DVD sales. In 2007 and 2008, legal movie downloading surged as more and more high profile players entered the market. However, while 2009 saw growth, it was way below analyst expectations and industry experts warn that the financial downturn doesn't explain it all.

A new report by Screen Digest showed movie downloading revenues in the U.S. of $291 million, way below the predicted $360 million haul. The total for 2008 hit $219 million, almost double what it was the year before. "The market just cooled off," said Arash Amel, a research director with Screen Digest. "This wasn't caused by economic factors . . . the level of interest in digital downloads just isn't there."

Consumer confusion is believed to be a large factor in cooling demand. Different avenues provide movie downloads with completely different limitations. "Digital downloading is characterised by its restrictions - it's all about what viewers can't do, rather than what they can do," added Mr Amel.

"Four years ago we thought this business would exceed $1.5bn by 2014 but now we think it will struggle to make $1bn."

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The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has overturned a controversial law that retained communication data between citizens for anti-terrorism purposes. The court called the law a "grave intrusion" of citizen's privacy in its decision. The ruling is a blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, which was displeased with it.

The Court said that the law needed to be revised, and that it did not correctly balance privacy rights for German citizens with measures to protect them from harm. Under the law, communication data by e-mail or phone was retained for possible use by law enforcement agencies, but the content of the communication wasn't itself retained.

Nearly 35,000 Germans had appealed to the court to overturn the law that stemmed from a Europe-wide data retention plan formed under the UK's EU Presidency term. Just the previous year, London had been the target of several terrorist attacks.

"The disputed instructions neither provided a sufficient level of data security, nor sufficiently limited the possible uses of the data," the court said, adding that "such retention represents an especially grave intrusion."

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, the country's top security figure, expressed disappointment at the court's decision. "It would be inappropriate to criticize a ruling by the constitutional court, but I have to say that it does not instill happiness," he told reporters.

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Spanish police have arrested men behind a 13 million-strong botnet used to spew spam around the world. All three men arrested were Spanish citizens, and none had any significant hacking skills. Over 13 million computers in 190 countries were believed to have been compromised in this case, with half of the Fortune 1000 companies and 40 major banks in some way affected.

The botnet was rendered inactive in December 2009 following action by the FBI, the Spanish Guardia Civil and security experts around the world. One of the three individuals gave investigators the break the needed when he inadvertently logged into the network without disguising his IP address. He was arrested in early February, and the other two arrests followed later in the month.

"This is very alarming because it proves how sophisticated and effective malware distribution software has become, empowering relatively unskilled cyber criminals to inflict major damage and financial loss," said Panda Security senior research adviser Pedro Bustamante.

Personal and sensitive information was harvested from the network by the three men, one of which had 800,000 pieces of personal data on his computer. The group made money by renting out use of the botnet to cyber-criminals that would use it to send out huge amounts of spam to Internet users.

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Nokia Corp. announced on Monday that Skype for the Symbian platform has been released. This makes Skype available for 200 million smartphone users worldwide. Skype for Symbian will allow Nokia smartphone users worldwide to use Skype on the move, over either a WiFi or mobile data connection (GPRS, EDGE, 3G). It is now downloadable for free from the Ovi Store, Nokia's one-stop shop for mobile content.

Skype for Symbian will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform. Skype will soon introduce this client to Symbian mobile devices from other manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson.

Using the new Skype app for Symbian enables smartphone users to:

• Make free Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world
• Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad
• Send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups
• Share pictures, videos and other files
• Receive calls to their existing online number
• See when Skype contacts are online and available to call or IM
• Easily import names and numbers from the phone's address book

"Symbian enables us to bring smartphones to more and more people and ensures scale for our solutions and compelling services, such as Skype. We're seeing around 1.5 million downloads a day on Ovi Store now and believe that the Skype client for Nokia smartphones will have wide appeal to Symbian users," said Jo Harlow, Senior Vice President for Smartphones, Nokia.

"With Skype for Nokia smartphones, more than 200 million smartphone users worldwide will be able to take the Skype features they love with them on the move. Alongside Skype's relationships with operators and handset manufacturers worldwide, making Skype available direct to consumers will help millions of users keep in contact with the people that are important to them without worrying about the cost, distance or whether they are away from a computer." Russ Shaw, General Manager, Mobile at Skype said.

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The guys over at Ben Heck forums have put together another portable console mod, this time with the Nintendo Wii.

Created by modder "OMGPedoBear," the Wii laptop took three months to build, and includes a 17-inch LCD monitor

The modder added a bunch of fans, and has a full keyboard as well.

It's not the prettiest mod we've ever seen but hey, it works.

Video:

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Today Western Digital announced a line of solid state 2.5 inch SATA hard drives called SiliconEdge Blue. The new drives include 64GB, 128GB & 256GB models.

The drives are intended to "accelerate SSD technology adoption by OEMs, technology enthusiasts, gamers and road warriors," said Michael Hajeck, senior vice president and general manager of WD's solid state storage business unit.

Traditional hard drives are arguably the weakest point in most computers. Reliance on mechanical parts makes them somewhat fragile and also limits performance.

The SiliconEdge Blue drives boast a sustained read speed of 250MB per second, compared to 100MB per second for Western Digital's fastest disk-based 2.5 inch drives in the Scorpio Black line. It's also a significant upgrade from 138MB per second for their best high performance desktop drive, the Caviar Black.

Sustained write speed isn't as good, which is normal for solid state storage. At 140MB per second it edges out the Caviar Black and handily beats the Scorpio Black.

Of course that performance comes at a steep price. The 64GB model has a suggested retail price of $279 USD. The 128GB model is priced at $529 and 256GB will cost you $999.

They all come with a three-year limited warranty. That's also the expected life of the drives.

Besides transfer speed, solid state drives can offer power saving advantages. When a SiliconEdge Blue drive is idle it uses less power than any other Western Digital hard drive, something that's an important consideration for mobile users.

Power consumption while reading is essentially the same as Scorpio Black drives. Writing actually uses more than half again as much, unlike the Scorpio drives where it remains the same for reading and writing.

For desktop users just looking for better read performance they could be a good solution, but with hard drives of 1TB - 2TB becoming commonplace it would seem their practical applications would be limited.

Although not a solution for every problem, hopefully these drives can help solid state drive technology catch on. It's about time long term storage took a leap forward to catch up with other computer technology.

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