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Verizon charging for one month's data with Samsung Galaxy Tab, too?
Looks like Verizon's idea of levying mandatory data fees on tablet buyers may be a global thing -- not only will new Xoom owners have to activate and pay for a month of data, but an eagle-eyed tipster sent in this image of a Best Buy price tag that confirms the very same for Samsung's Galaxy Tab. There's nothing to suggest that WiFi-only versions of either tablet would be subject to the surcharge -- with these cellular variants, we can almost understand -- but we don't see 3G iPads carrying mandatory activations, so what's the deal, Verizon? [Thanks, Brian R.]
Xbox 360 mandatory update restores boot to disc, detains Call of Duty pirates for a tad
The story of the Trojan Horse must be a favorite among video game console manufacturers, because software updates these days often come with more than bargained for -- today, Microsoft issued a mandatory Xbox 360 update, reportedly for a single bugfix, but which seems to have coincidentally halted scores of pirates and hackers from playing Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 on the console. Members of the Xbox-Scene forums noted the update was taking suspiciously long to download, discovered that backup copies of these games ceased to work, and presently believe that Microsoft included a patch for these two games to enable an anti-piracy feature that specifically targets burned copies. What does the mandatory update do for you if you're not part of the hacking scene? It merely enables the console to automatically boot a pre-inserted game when you power it on, a feature that was accidentally disabled in November. [Thanks, Brian]
PS3 3.42 software update reportedly patches jailbreak, hates fun
Sony just released its 3.42 software update for PlayStation 3 owners. As a mandatory update, PS3 jockeys must accept it if they want to continue accessing the PlayStation Network or PlayStation Store. While Sony's American mouthpiece isn't saying much about the release, Sony Japan says that it fixes a "hardware security issue," and that's it. Sounds like a patch for PSJailbreak and its open-source variants to us. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
The pros and cons of Battle.net
Well it's finally happened -- as of next month, you'll be required to have a Battle.net login to get into the game, so you might as well head over and merge your account up right now. It's not like we have a choice in the matter any more, but that doesn't mean lots of players still have apprehensions about the process. Naissa puts some of the concerns together clearly over on her blog -- putting all of her accounts under one username scares her, and that's a legit point. Not only can Blizzard presumably cut access to all of their games for just one (or even one false positive) ToS violation, but presumably, one hacker could now gain access to all of your Blizzard games with one hack. The online profile is another concern -- Bungie already has something like this running with Halo, and from my online profile, you can see clearly just how bad I am. With the Armory, there's a level of anonymity (you can't see your account name, just character names), but if Blizzard starts posting profiles under account names -- or even worse, "Real IDs," which are apparently real names -- that's one more layer of separation lost. Surely, they'll have to have a way to opt out of that.Of course, the changeover isn't all bad.
Battle.net conversion to become mandatory soon
In an interview over at Slashdot, J. Allen Brack, Lead Producer of WoW, spoke about the Battle.net conversion that's going on and how it will apply to WoW. One of the more important things he said was:We have optional Battle.net conversion right now, but that will be mandatory at some point in the not-too-distant future.Many people have done the conversion already, and many speculated and inferred from past Blizzard comments that the conversion would eventually become mandatory. But now it looks like it's going to be, and that date is in the "not-too-distant future."The conversion process is relatively straight forward, and can be started by visiting your account management page. There have been times when Battle.net enabled accounts were not able to get into the game due to authentication issues, but those seem to be diminishing.We'll be sure to keep you updated on any additional announcements concerning the upcoming mandatory conversion
