The British High Court has ruled that number of major broadband ISPs including Sky and TalkTalk must now block access to notorious file sharing site The Pirate Bay.
In a major victory for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media must now block access to the long-running Bittorrent search engine.
ISP Virgin Media said that the firm will comply with the order but added that the company "strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price."
"The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale," BPI chief Geoff Taylor trumpeted. "... musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else," he added.
The block is controversial since the site effectively amounts to a search engine which merely indexes results. While there's no doubt as to the purpose, it does rather raise the question about blocking access to any number of sites that provide search links to material that companies find objectionable.
Moreover, it's highly unlikely to be very effective as the Pirate Bay has proven to be remarkably resilient. Virtually regardless of the mechanism used to block the site, the determined with eye-patches and peg legs, will not find such a block hard to circumvent.

http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...ate-bay/028280 ...

Typically overclocking of CPUs requires increasing the voltage to reach the higher clock speeds but a number of reports on Ivy Bridge overclocking have found that increasing the voltage rapidly results in heavier power consumption and heat.
AnandTech's report on overclocking Intel's Ivy Bridge suggested that former owners of the previous generation Sandy Bridge processors may be "severely disappointed" by the overclocking potential of the new 22nm Ivy Bridge.
"Ultimately, Ivy Bridge hates voltage," said AnandTech's Ian Cutress.
The Tech Report found that additional voltage wasn't generally necessary to reach pretty decent speeds. "The Core i7-3770K was stable at 4.4-4.5GHz without so much as an extra millivolt applied to the CPU," they said.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Ivy Bridge is the ability to run at low voltages and consume very little power, particularly as Intel has played their usual conservative hand in terms of default voltage/speeds.
To illustrate the point, AnandTech found that the Ivy Bridge flagship i7-3770K could be simultaneously overclocked from 3.5GHz to 3.9GHz while also reducing the voltage to 0.9v volts. The result is higher performance while raising the CPU temperature just 2 degrees to 53C.
The 'undervolting' potential of Ivy Bridge probably shouldn't be a surprise given that Intel sells various postfix labelled versions of each processor which draw less power than the standard model.
Those demanding the best performance can still achieve something like 4.4GHz with the i7-3770K while hitting a heatsink temperature less than 70C. Not bad.
The moral of the story is, Ivy Bridge overclockers would be wise to read up before using similar settings to earlier Sandy Bridge chips.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...clocker/028281
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Over half of them only ever surf the mobile web.
Norwegian search engine Opera has been furiously driving its mobile efforts by introducing the Opera Mini browser to feature phones,adding mobile payments and updating its app store.
Given the campaign zest, it's unsurprising that – according toTechCrunch – Opera says Mini now has over 168.8 million users. Interestingly, 56 per cent of those only ever browse via mobile, demonstrating the impact of the migration from PCs.
The mobile-only web search figure increased for developing companies including Egypt, Bangladesh and Brazil which boast mobile-only rates of 72 per cent, 69 per cent and 65 per cent.
Additionally, Opera claims 35 per cent of users are likely to purchase music and games via their mobile devices than those who use another browser.
To add to the firm's impressive numbers, Mini users viewed over 117 billion pages last month, up 64 per cent on last year to generate a total of over 1.9 billion MB of data.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...m-users/017889 ...

45 per cent of Americans use their tablet while watching TV each day.
Nielsen Research is behind the data, which shows how much the US loves being connected to mobile media.
Almost half of all American tablet owners use the device while watching TV daily, while 69 per cent do so several times per week.
Checking emails was the highest priority with 61 per cent, with particular interest from 35-54 year olds and those aged 55+ securing 65 per cent apiece, while females bagged 64 per cent.
Social networking was also in high demand with 47 per cent, unsurprisingly peaking with 13-17 year olds at 62 per cent.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...-device/017893 ...

New evidence has indicated that the Wii U tablet controller may be struggling to live up to its original billing as a fully wireless peripheral.
The tablet was announced as a fully wireless controller capable of streaming a game's video and audio from Wii U and displaying it on the controller, but a leaked Ubisoft Wii U videosuggests the system may need to be wired to the console, in some instances at least.As you can see from the Ubisoft video (and the image on this page), the Wii U controller is clearly shown with a trailing wire, which appears to include a removable connector for a non-wired mode.
It's understood that development consoles currently feature wired controllers but let's face it, if Nintendo wanted to remove the wire from this official promo video, it wouldn't give the special effects team too much of a headache. Or, if as it looks, the wire is able to be unplugged, why not remove it?
[UPDATE: CVG reader Dean Jones points out that Ubisoft . Add that to the list of possible explanations.]
It's all speculation of course, but there have been reports before that Nintendo might be struggling with the streaming of data from the HD console to the tablet controller's LCD touchscreen.
A report last September claimed that Nintendo had rushed the final Wii U architecture through the door "with undesirable consequences" including "inadequate streaming and wireless functionality".
"So far, the wireless functions simply do not work at all," a source told 01.net, a usually reliable site for leaks. As a result, they went on to claim, developers are working with a tethered controller which apparently "still does not work properly".
Nintendo's current official line is that Wii U will only support one controller. According to a Developsource, Nintendo engineers are working hard to upgrade Wii U so that it can simultaneously support two tablet controllers.
"Nintendo now know they absolutely need to support two tablets," the site was told. "At E3 they didn't commit to this, but they know how important it is to make it technically feasible to support two screens. Even if that affects framerate, as a developer and player, I don't care. It needs to work. Developers will design appropriate games for this. If you're building a quiz game you're not going to give a shit about the framerate."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...suggests-leak/ ...

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has expressed concerns over Mario game sales in the UK.
Speaking to investors and highlighting the UK top 20 software chart to the right, he said: "Although there are six titles for the Nintendo platforms, the two Mario titles for the Nintendo 3DS have the smallest presence in the world. We need to promptly improve this situation."We don't think Iwata means Mario games are selling more copies in European microstates like Andorra and San Marino than they are in the UK, but rather that their UK performance is relatively poor when compared to sales in other major gaming nations like the US, Japan, Italy, France, Spain and Germany.
Iwata presented top 20 lists for these countries too, in which Mario games charted more frequently or in higher positions.
The Xbox 360 version of Mass Effect 3 was the top-selling game in the US and the UK during the first three months of the year, while One Piece Pirate Warriors for PS3 was the No.1 game in Japan during the first 16 weeks of 2012.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...es-says-iwata/ ...

Nintendo will soon release a new 'Midnight Purple' 3DS in America, major US retailer Sam's Club would have you believe.
The unannounced colour popped up on the retailer website, as spotted by a Joystiq reader, before being briskly removed again.Sadly, there was no picture or any indication of a release date, but it would appear an unlikely slip up if it were not related to some form of behind-the-scenes info.
If a purple 3DS sounds like your kind of style, hold off picking one up for a few weeks.
Nintendo recently released an important 3DS firmware update which adds folder functionality to the home screen, and support for game patches/updates.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ht-purple-3ds/ ...

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So, Nintendo may not be particularly keen to admit it, but Super Mario is now an annual franchise. New Super Mario Bros. 2 will arrive on 3DS in August, less than a year after Super Mario 3D Land appeared on the same two screens.After 17 Super Mario titles in the first 27 years of the series' life to date, six have now appeared in the last seven: New Super Mario Bros. (DS, June 2006), Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, November 2007), New Super Mario Bros. Wii (November 2009), Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii, June 2010), and then the 3DS duo. That's the same number of instalments as we've seen in the Call of Duty series, at least until Black Ops 2 is unveiled.When New Super Mario Bros. 2 (even the title is hilarious) was announced last weekend, I remember saying to someone I was with: "Cool! How long before we're typing in digits for our Mushroom Pass and patching Mario on day one to fix backwards-flying Koopas?"I've forgotten my first kiss, but I remember the first time I reached World 8 in Super Mario Bros. 3.Obviously that was rather crass (Koopa Paratroopas can already fly backwards), but while it's always tempting to pretend that Nintendo walks to its own beat, there's a grain of truth in there. Nintendo is actually a far more conservative games company than many others, only adopting even completely proven technologies - like online gaming - when it can do them on its own terms, and conservatism - the desire to "double down" on successful game series - is what breeds things like annual instalments and Online Passes.As the growing frequency of Super Mario games illustrates, it's not immune to the trends going on around it - the sorts of things that people on our comments threads typically find discomfiting, which is a polite way of saying they hate them hate them hate them.Games like Call of Duty have been growing ever more accessible through ruthless testing, steering your weapon onto targets, giving you someone to follow at all times, and even allowing you to complete some levels without ever firing a bullet. We laughed, we cried, we called it bad design. Meanwhile, Nintendo made it virtually impossible to run out of lives in Super Mario games, and introduced the Super Guide and Cosmic Guide in its last two Wii titles. What's the difference?One crumb of comfort may be that the way Nintendo actually sells its wares hasn't changed much despite everything that's going on around the company; despite Online Pass, premium downloadable content, day-one patches, in-app purchases, weapon unlocks, subscriptions and pre-order bonuses. Or at least that was true, but then anyone who pre-ordered Kid Icarus: Uprising from certain retailers was rewarded with a download code for 3D Classics: Kid Icarus - and the recent news that Nintendo's to offer day-and-date downloads for its own titles on Wii U and 3DS shows it's attacking the digital market with conviction.Some games warm the soul. Secret of Mana did for me when I was a teenager falling in love with Japanese RPGs for the first time.A cynical commentator might point out that while these things have been rare up to now, that may simply be because the Wii Shop and 3DS eStore lack the infrastructure to support things like premium DLC in their current forms. Perhaps those consistently hectoring Nintendo to make its online service a bit more like PlayStation Network or Xbox Live should be careful what they wish for.Whatever its motives, however, it is also fair to say that Nintendo has rarely behaved cynically in all of this. It has made mistakes - like the costly 3DS launch shambles and subsequent apology, price cut and Circle Pad Pro release - but, while it has frustrated them over the years, its fans have never had cause to liken its attitude to its corporate adversaries and partners like Activision and Electronic Arts.It's not just a strong heart, free of cynicism, that vouchsafes the quality of Nintendo's output though. The other thing that makes a huge difference is that Nintendo doesn't actually need to offer my fictional Mushroom Pass, because people don't really trade in Super Mario games in large quantities.The reason why came to me while I was watching Hayao Miyazaki's wonderful Spirited Away last Sunday evening, although I didn't realise it until later. Spirited Away has always been aptly named, because like so many Studio Ghibli films (especially Howl's Moving Castle, by far my favourite), it transports you utterly to the place where it is set.As I've grown older, I've found new places to drown my imagination, like The Wind Waker's Wind Temple.A lot of games used to do that to me when I was younger - most notably Secret of Mana on the SNES - but it's become a more elusive sensation as I've grown older and subconsciously set higher standards. It's harder to find things that elicit that completely willing suspension of disbelief, where you can see the structure of the media you're consuming and understand the director's methods, but you give yourself up to them nonetheless.The ...