Business, Financial & Legal - Page 302

With Newegg in one corner as the second-largest online retailer in the U.S. and the number one destination for tech-savvy shoppers, with Amazon the top U.S. e-tailer in the other corner, both releasing their holiday best-selling item reports.

Neweggs list contains:

Laptops/Notebooks: 15.6" Asus A53E-EH91

There have been plenty of people who have worked for ATI, that have moved onto bigger and better things by packing up their brown box, throwing their personal items inside like a plant or a family portrait (ok, ok, that sounds like a Hollywood cliche, but it's how I imagine it as an Australian) and moving to a better job.

Now former AMD employee, Richard Huddy, has moved onto Intel. His goal with the red team was to form stronger relations with the game developers themselves. Big news, eh? Huddy has pushed through plenty of things for not only the technological industry, but the gaming industry. He worked with one of my favorite games, Max Payne, and ended up with a starring role as the mad professor in the lab. From there, he has helped a tonne of huge games hit the market.

These include Harry Potter, Just Cause, Battlefield 2 and Burnout Paradise. He also was a big player in pushing HDR with AA into a bunch of games over the years. Why would Intel want Huddy? Well, they want their GPU business to fly. Intel's Haswell architecture, due in 2013, will reportedly establish Intel as some form of leader in the mass-market graphics space.

I've covered SOPA-related news for the past few days, as it is getting quite serious with GoDaddy being hit hard. It has just been announced that Jimmy Wales decision to find a new home for Wikipedia, away from the SOPA loving hands of GoDaddy.

Wales is quite unhappy with GoDaddy's position on the Stop Online Privacy Act, by announcing the shift in the following tweet:

Apple have just completed a deal to purchase Israeli flash memory firm, Anobit. The deal is reportedly worth between $400-$500 million, which makes it Apple's largest acquisition since NeXT which cost $404 million. A tweet from the Twitter account of Israel's Prime Minster has said:

It is not just exciting for Apple, but for consumers, too. Apple's new investment in Anobit shows their commitment to requiring fast flash memory, as Israel is a country known for technological breakthroughs, such as its early work in mobile phones and instant messaging.

If you haven't heard of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), then I suggest you do some serious reading, because last week the House Judiciary Committee discussed it, and the results of SOPA would not be good, at all.

There was an abrupt end to the markup session on Friday, with a new hearing date set for this week. Opposition to SOPA is growing, with the General Manger of Reddit stepping in and saying that the bill would "almost certainly mean the end" of Reddit.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will continue discussing SOPA to decide whether the bill should move to the full House. Until then, lobbying groups for and against the bill continue with their efforts to influence the votes of committee members.

CD Projekt, developers behind the successful currently PC-only game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is going after pirates. The game has sold over one million copies so far, and while they are confident behind these sales numbers, they are also confident in going after pirates of their hard work.

CD Projekt are going after pirates, claiming that only people who they are sure downloaded a copy of the game illegally are receiving a threat of legal action. Michal Nowakowski, CD Projekt's VP of Business Development says:

We all know Skyrim has enjoyed a very successful career in just six weeks, but just how successful? Well, firstly, it has shipped over 10 million copies since it's 11/11/11 launch, with "Large retail reorders across all platforms and record-breaking digital sales reflect the ongoing global demand by consumers excited to explore this extraordinary fantasy epic," the company said in a statement.

Robert Altman, Chairman and CEO of ZeniMax Media has said:

Three Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) workers, Young Keun Park, Sang Hun Kim and Sik "Daniel" Hur will face jail time after pleading guilty to fixing optical disk drive prices, according to the US Department of Justice. Throughout 2005 to 2009, the three employees suppressed competition by rigging bids for optical disk drives sold to both Dell and HP, in addition to fixing prices for devices sold to Microsoft.

Under the plea agreement, Park and Kim will serve eight months in prison, while Hur will experience seven months in jail. All there will have to pay a $25,000 fine. The three executives will also be charged with multiple violations of the Sherman Act, which covers antitrust and anticompetitive activities. Each count of the Sherman Act comes with a statutory fine of up to $1 million, (and more if the damages are large enough), and up to 10-years behind bars.

This is the first ruling against individual workers, but is the second round of charges against the join Hitachi-LG venture. Last month, HLDS itself pleaded guilty to 14 counts of violating federal antitrust laws between the June 2004 and September 2009. Hitachi-LG were sentenced to pay a $21.1 million fine and is said to be helping the DoJ with its investigation.

Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. announced today that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 passed the $1 billion mark in sales in just 16 days since its November 8 launch. This beats the record set in 2009 from James Cameron's "Avatar" which hit $1 billion in 17 days.

The Call of Duty community now consists of more than 30 million gamers, which is more than the combined populations of the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Madrid. Some crazy, crazy numbers. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard has said:

Motorola would be running around saying HELLO MOTO to each other today in excitement, as a German court ruled against Apple in an ongoing battle over patents. Motorola's complaing was that Apple failed to license on of their wireless intellectual properties. Apple use this technology in their 3G-packing iPads and iPhones.

Motorola could now force Apple to remove the feature from their products, or even have the ability to slap a sales ban in Germany. Apple have said that they intend to appeal the ruling, while Motorola claim the ruling validated its "efforts to enforce its patents against Apple's infringement."

Apple have replied, by saying: