Daily News Brief: If You Can Read This, You're not Playing Halo 3!

Posted 09/25/2007 at 3:52pm | by

5

Comments

Print

Halo 3 Breaks Pre-Sale Record

It didn't take long for Halo 3 to post record breaking numbers, breaking 1.5 million pre-sale orders before going on sale at midnight. Halo 3 becomes the fastest selling pre-sale game ever, and is predicted to have the biggest launch of the year as it debuts in 37 countries in 17 languages. Van Baker, the vice president of media industry research for Gartner, believes Halo 3 could eventually lead to an increase in the XBox 360 install base by 500,000 to 1 million new users.

OpenOffice Vulnerability Affects Mulitple OSes

iDefense Labs discovered a bug in OpenOffice that could leave Linux, Windows, and Mac users vulnerable to remotely executed attacks. The bug, which comes in the form of maliciously crafted TIFF files, affects versions 2.0.4 and earlier, but not the newly released 2.3.

Pricing Set on Office 2008 for Mac

Speaking of vulnerable software (ZING!), Microsoft has released pricing and package information for Office 2008 for Mac. The standard version (includes PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Entourage) will sell for $399, and $499 buys the Special Media Edition, which throws in Expression Media, a digital media cataloguing program. A more affordable Home version will be available for $149. Office 2008 will be the first version to natively support Intel-based Macs.

OLPC Launches 'Give One Get One'

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative promised $100 laptops for developing countries, but because the price kept going up, international interest has waned with the only confirmed orders coming from Mexican businessman Carlos Slim and Libya's Gaddafi Foundation. To help spur an install-base of early adopters and kick start software development, Nichols Negroponte announced the 'Give One Get On' promotion. For every $399 XO laptop you purchase, a second one will be donated to a child in a developing nation. The promotion will run from November 12 to 26.

Amazon Tosses DRM Shackles

You waited for it, and now it's here. Today Amazon launched their DRM-free music download store, debuting with more than 2 million songs encoded at 256 kbps. Pricing for each song runs $.89 to $.99, with full albums selling anywhere between $5.99 and $9.99. Amazon hopes to compete with iTunes' 70 percent market share.

MSNBC not Impressed with EA's Boogie

A game review on MSNBC? You betcha, only this isn't one EA can be proud of. According to the write-up, 'Boogie' for the Nintendo Wii fails because "the dancing is dull, the karaoke doesn't work, and you actually can't even do both at the same time." Ouch! And once you've edited your music video, there's no option to upload it to other Wii owners. Believe it or not, the review goes downhill from here...

And Finally...

...in a 23 page handwritten complaint, a man is suing Google for (are you ready?) $5 billion. No need to go on, really.