Microsoft will launch its Xbox Live online game-playing service on Nov. 15, a year after the video game console entered the market, the company plans to announce Tuesday.
As previously reported, Microsoft will sell a $50 Xbox Live starter kit that includes a headset microphone, a one-year subscription to the service, and software that allows the Xbox to tap into an existing broadband Internet connection.
Microsoft is betting heavily on online play as one of the features that will distinguish the Xbox from Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube. The software giant has said it will spend $2 billion over the next few years to build out the Xbox Live network and develop the next generation of its game console.
The Nov. 15 launch date for Xbox gives a two-month head start to Sony, which on Aug. 27 will begin selling a network adapter that will let the PS2 tap into a broadband or dial-up Internet connection for online game play.
Besides Sony's support for dial-up connections, the main difference between the two companies' approaches is that Xbox Live will be a closed network, with Xbox gamers able to connect to each other only through the Microsoft-maintained Xbox Live system. The system will include games from Microsoft and third-party publishers.
Sony will leave it to game publishers to do the back-end work of maintaining servers and other infrastructure, with the PS2 maker providing the software to make it work.
News source: Cnet
As previously reported, Microsoft will sell a $50 Xbox Live starter kit that includes a headset microphone, a one-year subscription to the service, and software that allows the Xbox to tap into an existing broadband Internet connection.
Microsoft is betting heavily on online play as one of the features that will distinguish the Xbox from Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube. The software giant has said it will spend $2 billion over the next few years to build out the Xbox Live network and develop the next generation of its game console.
The Nov. 15 launch date for Xbox gives a two-month head start to Sony, which on Aug. 27 will begin selling a network adapter that will let the PS2 tap into a broadband or dial-up Internet connection for online game play.
Besides Sony's support for dial-up connections, the main difference between the two companies' approaches is that Xbox Live will be a closed network, with Xbox gamers able to connect to each other only through the Microsoft-maintained Xbox Live system. The system will include games from Microsoft and third-party publishers.
Sony will leave it to game publishers to do the back-end work of maintaining servers and other infrastructure, with the PS2 maker providing the software to make it work.
News source: Cnet
Rafa is well known on the hacker scene, and fronted the notorious website defacement group, World of Hell, throughout most of 2001.
But when he quit to move on at the start of this year the rest of the group disbanded. It has now become apparent that Rafa has moved on to become an 'investigative' hacker rather than a website vandal.
Indeed, he claims to be more of a 'researcher' these days and insisted that that he did not understand the sensitivity of the Nasa documents when he discovered them.
The information is said to include engineering details about the Cobra space shuttle engine design programme, as well as information on the Boeing TA4 Advanced Checkout, Control & Maintenance System for the next generation of space shuttles.
While it is not thought that the documents could be used to damage the space programme, they are restricted under export law and US International Trafficking in Arms regulations.
The information is reported to be of most interest to foreign governments and competitors in the same space.
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