After the current Xbox Live banning that occurred a few weeks ago, a Texas Based Law Firm is in the process of organizing a class action lawsuit. On their website, Abington IP has a form for those who were banned to submit their information and story.
From reading the information on the site, it’s not due to being banned from Xbox Live itself, but also what Microsoft did personally to your console.
Additional *reported* problems resulting from the bans include, but are not necessarily limited to:
* Disabling/altering Xbox functionality *NOT* associated with Xbox Live or piracy (HDD functionality for example);
* Disabling/altering Xbox functionality *NOT* associated with piracy (Netflix, game add-ons, music, and arcade games for example);
* Obtaining information from Xbox consoles without permission of the owner;
* Other problems/consequences associated with these bans have been reported here and elsewhere. [Read More]
As if Halloween isn’t enough for today, Microsoft has confirmed that it has started the mass banning of modified drives in the Xbox 360. These drives are known to be flashed with iXtreme Firmware. This flashing allows members of the Xbox community to play Pirated games in their console, or what we like to refer to it as, “Backup Games.”
In response to inquiries from IGN, a Microsoft spokesperson said:
We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs. In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox LIVE.
To keep from being banned, users who have their drive flashed, should always remember to verify their backups with ABGX. ABGX will verify that the backup you’re going to play, is “Stealth Verified”, which will stop Microsoft from determining that you have a flashed drive.
You should also make sure you’re running the latest version of iXtreme Firmware, and verifying your backups with abgx.
For more information on iXtreme Firmware and ABGX, head over to iXtreme.net
Lucky for me, since I’m running Windows 7 RTM, I found out that Window Media Player 12, support the m2ts HD file format for streaming to my PS3. In the past, I always used Tversity, Twonky Media, etc. But the days of that are gone my friends. Overall, didn’t find any issues in streaming HD content, looked just as good, and hey, it’s free. No more searching on warez-bb.org or anything.
Now, one thing that always helps is having a 1000mb connection from my box to the PS3. Having this, no matter what program you’re using to stream, really cuts down on any buffering issues you might see, when compared to streaming the same video or wireless, or even a 100mb connection.
So I just got done installing Windows 7 RTM on my mac book pro, boot camp style. People, I have to admit, compared to Vista, this OS has come along way. Is it perfect, everything we need and more, no, but in every aspect I can see as of now, it puts Vista to shame.
The only issue I had after installing was no audio. Even installing the Boot Camp drivers, I was un-able to get any audio. I noticed that on the audio head phone jack, that it was red. Interesting I though, because when I’m running Leopard, that does not happen. So after much googling, I found that downloading the Realtek High Definition Audio and installing, finally gave me what I was looking for, sound!
Other than the audio issue, everything else seems to be working quite well. One thing I really like, which only seems to work on IE8, not on Google Chrome, is if you have multiple tabs open, and move the mouse over the IE thumbnail, you get a snap shot of all your open tabs.
Zune Pass has just launched the microsite, ZunePass.net, where you can find out how much it really cost to fill up that sexy iPod using iTunes. Find out how much it cost to fill up a 4, 8, 16, 32 or a 120GB iPod using iTunes.
Checkout the Zune Pass Calculator below. Think it’s time to ditch my 80GB iPod and get one of those Zunes!
<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=62dbb022-c818-4603-9db2-2cc2468d057c" target="_new" title="MONEY PIT - WES MOSS DRAWS THE LINE AT MUSIC">MONEY PIT – WES MOSS DRAWS THE LINE AT MUSIC</a>
So I thought it’d be fun, to take as many uploaded images from http://imapc.lifewithoutwalls.com, and create a little mosaic of them. I ended up with around 12, 108 files. But I wanted to make sure no duplicates were used, so the mosaic image is 5,000, which gave me a good buffer.
Used Charles on my mac, to download all the jpg’s off the site. The rest was easy, used AndreaMosaic along with Deep Zoom Composer.
For starters, it’s more stable than Vista, if that tells you anything. No, but for being in a beta phase, I’m quite impressed with the features and design interface of Windows 7. Also, since I’ve only ran this on my Mac via VMware, and not on a dedicated box, the OS seemed to handle better than Vista did than on my same mac.
But I’m still let down in that maneuvering throughout the OS is still as difficult as Vista. I was really hoping they would come out with a new and improved process of navigating through the GUI. As far as I can tell, exact same as Vista, big let down there.
I’m not sure what the exact number is, but I hear Microsoft was going to be releasing the OS with 5 different variations? Now this is where Microsoft needs to get a grip. Coming out with all these Starter Editions, Business Editions, etc, is just plain out retarded (uh oh, politically incorrect ). This is where Microsoft should look to the competition for answers, and take some advice. Come out with 1 edition, not 5, not 6, not 7, but 1 release.
Microsoft has just launched an update to Windows.com, where all the latest TV Commercials for their latest campaign can be viewed. Now, all the I’m a PC commercials, Rookies, and Mojave Experiment ads are in one central place, pretty cool if you liked any of those series. What’s new is the series, are the 7 Versus 70, 8 Versus 80, and 9 Versus 90. The only media I honestly can’t stand to watch are the 7 Versus 70, 8 Versus 80, and 9 Versus 90. Theses set of videos are probably the Worst I’ve ever seen. Seriously people, I was debating on embedding these videos on my site, we’ll, I figured if I have to watch them, so should you. [Read More]
