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This is some good news for those who are based in Europe, your ISP cannot be forced to monitor or block you from using the Web. A European court has ruled that record labels and film studios can't use the courts to instruct your broadband ISP to track or try to block you.

The European Court of Justice ruled:

This is something that would make quite a lot of sense, and actually be quite good for customers and gamers alike. Industry sources are pointing toward two new Xbox consoles being launched sometime in 2013, which should give Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) plenty of time to get their 28nm manufacturing process working like a charm.

Microsoft is said to be working on an entry-level system as well as a true next-generation hardcore gaming console. Multiple price points aren't anything new for Microsoft, as that's what they do with the 360 with multiple packages. Different hard drive sizes, limited edition bundles, game and accessory bundles.

The lower-end model is said to come at a very low price point and be positioned more like a set-top box, where it will target streaming media services such as Netflix and cater more to casual gamers, described as a Kinect-themed portal. The mainstream, hardcore gaming Xbox would be the upgrade we all want, dream and wish for. Sporting an optical drive (Blu-ray?), hard drive storage, and backwards-compatibility with existing 360 games. This system would have a price premium over the entry-level model, with price and graphics performance reflective of these features (awesome!).

Is this the change we're seeing in console development? They do a sloppy job on the PC version, sales are bad and they just blame piracy? Surely a stable-minded developer wouldn't think that way, well, think again. Ghost Recon Online is set to be a free-to-play game, and is a 'response' to piracy and an alternative to the restrictive DRM that has plagued previous Ubisoft games.

Ghost Recon Online producer, Sebastien Arnoult has said:

Samsung have a new series of commercials where they poke fun at Apple fans, its not a dark insult, but more of a realistic view of most Apple customers. The ad starts in a lineup for Apple's iPhone 4S in New York, a similar site in most cities around launch day. A large group of Apple fans are lined up, talking about how this is "an event" and they will "remember it for the rest of their lives."

Just after this, another guy outside the line is on his smartphone and it attracts the people in the lineup, he's holding a Samsung Galaxy S II. The Apple fanboys comment on how light and thin the device is and how large the display is. Some of the quotes are "I could never get a Samsung, I'm creative", with someone saying "Dude, your'e a barista."

One of the Samsung owners says "Why don't you guys just get 4G phones?", with one of the Apple fans in the lineup says in a very sarcastic tone, "Why don't you just get 4G phones?". "The battery looks sketchy", "If it looks the same, how will people know I upgraded?" All of the things that most Apple fans (who aren't completely stuck in the Apple rose garden) would say. If the phones look the same, how does someone know if you have a iPhone 4 or 4S from a distance?

Microsoft back in 2008, had a very public failed takeover attempt of Yahoo, where they were willing to dish out $46 billion to purchase Yahoo. It failed, and now according to reports, have signed a confidentiality agreement with Yahoo which allows them to take a closer look at the struggling company's business as they explore various options for striking a deal.

Microsoft are joined by private-equity firms such as TPG Capital and Silver Lake, where they're going line for line over Yahoo's books and operations. Microsoft this time, is not looking for a complete takeover, but is only looking to help finance a bid as part of a consortium and not buy Yahoo outright, in a move to safeguard their ongoing web-search partnership with Yahoo.

When Carol Bartz was CEO of Yahoo, Microsoft forged a 10-year agreement to provide search technology to Yahoo, which has played an important role in Bing's growth. Should Yahoo go through any issues, or have another company take the keys and change or end the deal or demands of the deal, it would not be clear skies for Microsoft. But, if Microsoft were to hold a controlling [but minority] stake in Yahoo, it might be enough to allow Microsoft the power to continue the current arrangement without having to write a cheque for the full acquisition and operational responsibility of Yahoo.

At it stands right now, Apple is currently the second-largest PC vendor worldwide, with Hewlett Packard sitting firmly in first place. But, come to end of 2012, this could very well change. Research outfit Canalys, says Apple's share of the PC market has grown 6-percent in the past twelve months alone.

What is driving this growth? The super-famous iPad, which Canalys considers a personal computer. Canalys Analysis (say that three times fast) Tim Coulling says:

Acer and ASUS are working with panel manufacturers AU Optronics and Chimei Innolux separately to develop a new generation of full HD notebook panels with resolutions of 1928x1080, according to industry insiders. This is contributed by the fact that Apple are pushing for their next-generation iPads to sport 2048x1536-capable displays in early 2012.

Acer and ASUS want to push the next release of Ultrabooks in Q1 2012 at the earliest, to feature 1080p displays. At the moment, ASUS' 11.6-inch UX21 Zenbook models sport a resolution of 1366x768, with upgrades of resolution to 1600x900 for its 13.3-inch UX31 models. Acer's 13.3-inch Aspire S3 also includes a 1366x768 display.

Both ASUS and Acer are expecting to deliver between 400,000 and 500,000 Ultrabooks before the end of this year. Upgrading them to 1080p panels should help them compete against Apple's MacBook Air, a lot.

Before id Software sold themselves [and their souls] to consoles, id Tech 4 engine was great. It powered Doom 3, and by 2007 it went on to become the most successful project by id Software to date. It also powered other games such as Quake 4, Prey, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Wolfenstein and Brink.

John Carmack has now confirmed that the source code for Doom 3 is now available, only after some delays due to legal issues. Those legal issues arise from the use of "Carmack's Reverse" algoritm which has to do with a method of rendering shadow volumes using a stencil buffer.

At around the same point in time that Carmack discovered the algoritm, Creative Labs filed a patent for essentially the same thing. id Software, according to reports, agreed to include EAX audio technology in Doom 3 in order to use the shadow rendering technique in the game. Carmack didn't want to run the risk of getting into a legal battle over the code, so he decided to remove it from the source code and work around it. Carmack said that he added four lines of code and changed two for the workaround.

Steam have started their Autumn Sale which will run until the end of the weekend, with today's sale including Portal 2, Men of War: Vietnam, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Duke Nukem Forever, Test Drive Unlimited 2 and many, many more.

As for savings, how's this for some great pricing? Portal 2 is 66-percent off, $29.99 down to $10.19, COD: Black Ops has 50-percent off, $89.99 down to $44.99, Duke Nukem Forever includes 66-percent off, down from $49.99 to $16.99 and TDU2 has an amazing 75-percent off, from $19.99 to just $4.99.

Mass Effect 2 has 75-percent off, from $19.99 down to $4.99 and the Sam and Max Complete Pack also has 75-percent off, slashing the original $49.99 price down to $12.49. More sales are obviously on, and I'll continue to post some of the stand-out games for you. Black Friday sales are here already, it seems!

We all know that Apple and Samsung's relationship has been a bit... interesting, over the past few months, but today's news is actually quite the surprise. Apple is reportedly shifting production of iPhone and iPad displays to Sharp in Japan, and may even introduce a television with Sharp-based screens as early as the middle of next year.

Jefferies & Co were behind the latest report, with New York-based analyst Peter Misek giving the skinny on Apple's new foray into display production. Apple moving its business to Sharp will be at the expense of Samsung, as they are the current partner for Apple's displays.

Misek said in an interview:

AMD are reportedly having more issues with their APUs in production with GlobalFoundaries on the 28nm process. Rumors have started emerging over the last few days that AMD cancelled its Wichita and Krishna APUs, the 28nm successors to its C-Series and E-Series chips for budget and mainstream notebooks.

AMD are now looking to move production of 28nm chips from GlobalFoundaries to TMSC, as well as starting completely from scratch. As ExtremeTech have said, "the implications and financial repercussions could be enormous," there's just no other way to put it. Moving 28nm APUs from GloFo to TMSC means completely scrapping the existing designs and laying out new parts using gate-laste compared to gate-first manufacturing currently in place at GloFo.

One way around this is for AMD to just do a straighforward 28nm die shrink of existing Ontario/Zacate products, but we would see no architectural improvements that we would've seen with the arrival of Krishna/Wichiita, they'd lower Brazos' power consumption, which would just buy more time for AMD to release a new processor.

Apple have just allowed a video-game company to offer their titles on a subscription for the iPad, something they've only thus far allowed magazine and newspaper publishers. Big Fish Games, a Seattle-based publisher, won approval from Apple to become the first to offer access to dozens of titles for $6.99 per month.

Until today, games have only been made available as a one-time purchase, requiring users to download individual applications. Apple introduced their subscription feature earlier this year, where the founder of Big Fish, Paul Thelen, seeing an opportunity to offer an "all-you-can-eat" service. This is great as it allows players to go into one game, then into another, without having to download separate games.

Game-subscription services have not had a perfect track record, but mix the popularity of the iPad, with easy payment methods provided by Apple's App Store, makes this a much better step in the right direction. Thelen says:

Well, this is quite the development and is sure to set a fire under the rug for most people. The only method that Kindle Fire owners will be able to install apps is through the Amazon Appstore for Android, it does not ship with Google's Android Market, period.

This means that Android developers need to make sure that their apps will be available on the Amazon Appstore, if they want to get a piece of those 12 million Fire owners that Amazon hope to have in 2012. Right up until now, Amazon has been very Apple-esque in the way that they treat developers, and publishers. By having your app on the Amazon Appstore, you give up more control than Apple actually asks of you, with you giving up the control to set your own price and control your app's description, with more restrictions behind those Fire-y curtins.

Google's open approach to the Android Market is what draws a lot of people to it, versus the rose-tinted world of Apple's App Store, or Amazon's Appstore. If the Fire does indeed sell 12 million tablets next year, what will happen to owners who want a game, or app that just isn't made available on the Amazon Appstore? I hate to think that Amazon could have this plan back fire on them...

AMD is reportedly set to unleash their first Radeon HD 7000M series GPUs for notebooks on December 9th. There are said to be at least 16 models to be announced, all based on two silicons: "Thames" and "Seymour", and are being carved out of toggling various components within those GPUs.

AMD will launch models across the Radeon HD 7400M series, 7500M series, and 7600M series. Thames and Seymour are brand new chips that are built on the 28nm silicon fabrication process, which will allow AMD more TDP headroom where they can ramp up the clock speeds.

At the moment, there's no details on things like stream processor, ROP, and TMU counts, but ComputerBase.de have compiled a list which shows GPU and memory clock speeds, memory interface widths, and memory type. The table also makes a mention of higher-end GPU models with names of "Chelsea", "Heathrow", and "Wimbeldon".

Well, it feels like this is a game of tug-of-war, one day we hear rumors of a next-generation Xbox coming out in 2012, then a day flips past and it is not coming. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities says that the Xbox 720 won't launch next year and probably won't even see the light of day in 2013, either.

He believes that Microsoft might launch an updated version of the Xbox 360 instead. He said:

The PC version of Battlefield 3 received its patch last night, weighing in at roughly 450MB. The patch has a huge change log/fix list, which fixes a bunch of issues people were experiencing, also while balance and gameplay adjustments have been made.

My triple-monitor, SLI system is still having issues. Even thought the patch includes "fixed multiple problems when using multiple monitors (Eyefinity/Surround)", this is my beef with DICE. There are countless people across Battlelog, and various other forums who are experiencing severe issues with multiple monitors. Did DICE not consult NVIDIA or AMD with this game? Did NVIDIA and AMD not test it on their setups? Did no-one at DICE, NVIDIA, or AMD, during testing, think to try it out on multi-monitor setups? Triple 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 30-inch setups would take me less than a few days of tinkering around. Yet, with all those teams and power, DICE couldn't do it?

This is why I'm so strongly opposed to consoles, and the development going to consoles for AAA titles. NVIDIA and AMD have all these new technologies like Eyefinity, Vision Surround, 3D Vision Surround, yet half the games either don't work on them, or have huge amounts of issues like BF3 does.

Not much to say about it, but there's a video below of a hands-on experience with ASUS' Transformer Prime, which packs NVIDIA's Tegra 3 quad-core (with fifth "companion" core) SoC. The video is actually showing off the Prime with Android 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich.

I must say, it looks absolutely delicious. Maybe that's the Ice Cream Sandwich I'm drooling over, but Prime looks fast. Very fast. The video shows off the UI, movement between screens, a quick game of Riptide GP, and 1080p video playback which is absolutely seamless. The only issue is Prime will not launch with ICS, but will have it in a future update.

I now know how Twilight fans feel when they catch a glimpse of R Patz.

It's full steam ahead for Apple's next-generation iPad, the iPad 3. We've talked about it before, reporting that it would sport a 9.7-inch 2048x1536 display, but it seems that CNET's Richard Shim is claiming that the iPad 3 panels are going into production.

The new screens are said to be QXGA displays and will be manufactured by no less than three separate display suppliers which is set to ensure Apple have enough devices at launch, which is said to be in April, with an announcement the month before, in March. From CNET:

We've seen a few different AMD Catalyst drivers lately, with today bringing the Catalyst 11.11a driver. What does it do? Well, as usual, it supports Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP and brings some fixes, support and improvements for Batman: Arkham City, RAGE, Skyrim and Battlefield 3.

You can grab the drivers here, and for a rundown of what the Catalyst 11.11a driver does, take a look below:

Batman Arkham City:

I was in high school when Buffy was on TV, I absolutely was in teen-love with Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Now there's rumors of the Facebook phone once again, codenamed "Buffy." The phone is reportedly going to sport a modified version of Google's Android OS which Facebook have tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services, as well as featuring support for HTML5 as a platform for applications.

Facebook have only recently chosen HTC after considering Samsung as a potential hardware partner. This means we won't see products with the Facebook branding for at least 12 months. Buffy has reportedly been an ongoing area of concert for Facebook for two years now. Buffy is led by Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, and a spokesperson for Facebook may have declined to comment on Buffy directly, but did say to AllThingsD: