Back in February, Dell revealed its intentions to enter the ARM server field. Today, the company announced that it is shipping ARM-based Copper servers to a limited number of customers. Copper is lower power than x86 servers, and Dell thinks this makes it a good fit for energy-intensive platforms such as Hadoop. In that same vein, the company views Copper as a cost-effective option that can be used for light workloads and for testing performance. In addition to deploying its new servers to select clients, Dell will be looking to the open source community for help in further developing its ARM system (the platform currently runs Linux). No word on when Copper will move beyond the testing phase.

SOURCE via Dell

Most Xbox 360 bundles focus on shiny colors over extra features. We’ll take them any day, but we prefer functional pack-ins like that in the just-unveiled 250GB Racing Bundle. On top of Microsoft’s higher-end console, you’ll find a copy of Forza Motorsport 4 to build your racing chops and a Wireless Speed Wheel to give a slightly more faithful driving experience. The effect won’t match that of a Motion Simulation TL1, but at $299, you’ll have money left over to buy a real car when the Xbox bundle arrives in mid-June — and only a slight premium over the usual 250GB console’s $249 price tag.

SOURCE via Major Nelson

If Amazon’s video store is going to compete with the other online sources like Hulu and Netflix, getting on as many platforms as possible is key and it made a major expansion today by launching on the Xbox 360. The app launched on the PS3 back in April, and just like that version, this one includes access to Amazon’s video on-demand and Prime all-you-can-eat subscription based streaming. Unique to the Xbox 360 app is support for the console’s Kinect peripheral and its ability to recognize control by gesture or voice, plus a brand new feature for Amazon — a queue.

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An illuminating blog post on Battle.net outlines a number of significant changes that will be made to Diablo 3 in the coming weeks. An imminent client patch is set to fix a number of “service issues,” but future patches will make changes to class balance, gems, the blacksmith and legendary items. Here’s a list of the solid changes that Blizzard say we can expect from future updates, and a summary of their thoughts on class balance and Inferno difficulty. Read more…

Color us shocked and jealous at the new Android 4.0 phone from Sharp — strange and wonderful even by Japan’s highly elevated standards. The eight colors of the 3.7-inch Pantone branded phone from carrier Softbank are nice for sure, but the ability to sense between .005 and 9.99 μSv/h of radiation is in a new category altogether. Though Sharp has hedged a bit by describing the detector as “non-compliant” with Japan standards at this point, the possibilities seem endless for such a feature — the ability to constantly report your location and radiation level to Facebook comes to mind, for instance. It will be offered — in Japan only, we presume — with a 4-megapixel rear camera, eight Pantone colors, 0.3-megapixel front camera, 854 x 480 resolution, and will be dust-proof and waterproof. The price hasn’t been discussed yet, but we can’t imagine too much quibbling whatever it is, for a phone that could keep you gamma-ray safe.

SOURCE via Engadget

Considering that The Witcher 2 is available on GOG.com completely DRM-free, you’d think that pirating the on-disc version of The Witcher 2 would be shunned for the DRM-free download.

Nope. Apparently, pirates like rolling it the hard way. If you decided to pirate The Witcher 2, more likely than not, you’ll probably be downloading the version packaged with DRM. CD Projekt’s CEO Marcin Iwinski believes that maybe pirating the DRM version is for “glory.” He sees no other reason as to why the DRM version is being passed around as opposed to the non-DRM version.

I’d propose that pirates continue to pirate the DRM version as a way of protesting DRM. The non-DRM version hasn’t been passed around maybe as a sign of respect to the fact that the game doesn’t have that extra barrier.

Maybe this indicates that removing the barrier of DRM is a good way of reducing piracy rates in PC gaming. Piracy’s impossible to prevent, no matter how many stringent regulations are put down to try and reduce it. I know plenty of people who’ve purchased games with tough DRM, such as Ubisoft’s online-always DRM, only to pirate the game anyway out of frustration of being unable to play the game when they want to. Hopefully, CD Projekt’s set an example that other publishers will take steps to follow in the footsteps of.

SOURCE via Geek

Last year, the European Union passed new online privacy regulations that stated all websites across the EU must obtain users permission before storing cookies. Previous laws relating to online privacy stated that website owners must tell people how they used cookies, and explain how to ‘opt out’ if users wanted to do so. However, new rules say that cookies can only be placed on machines where the user or subscriber has given their consent. The only exception to the new rule is for ‘strictly necessary’ cases, such as remembering what a customer added to their shopping cart after they have hit ‘proceed to check out.’

In effect as of May 26, 2011 websites in the United Kingdom were given 12 months to comply with the new laws. In case you haven’t looked at your calendar in a while, today is May 28, which means any website not complying with the law as of Saturday is now in breach of this law. Interestingly enough, the BBC last week reported that the government itself was expected to miss the May 26 deadline.

“As in the private sector, where it is estimated that very few websites will be compliant by 26 May, so it is true of the government estate,” a Cabinet Office spokesman told the BBC last week. “The majority of department websites will not be compliant with the legislation by [May 26].”

The spokesperson said that the government was “working to achieve compliance at the earliest possible date” but offered no indication as to when that might be. Of course, preparing your site for a change like this is no easy feat — websites have to first do a cookie audit to determine what cookies they’re storing, and then put together a solution that informs users of what they’re collecting and offers them a way to opt out of cookie collection if they wish to do so. In fact, the Information Commissioner’s Office has said it’s well aware that it will take time to comply. It seems ICO is happy enough to know that websites are on the path to compliance and is very understanding of those that aren’t there quite yet.

“We’ve actually spoken to lots of organisations who are on the road to compliance,” said ICO’s Dave Evans. “They’ve told us about the steps that they’ve already taken [...] so we’re aware lots of organisations will be compliant, either already or in the near future,” he continued, later adding that the ICO knows it’s not an easy task for website owners to undertake.

“From our point of view we have to recognise that this isn’t an easy area for people to comply,” Evans said. “I think this isn’t a matter of just switching off the internet and starting again, it’s not so simple as that. There’s lots of work involved. For some of the organisations we spoke to, this cookie audit takes a long time because of the sheer number of cookies that they use. So while we recognise that there are issues around how long this is going to take, what we do expect is that anyone who’s not ready by the end of May 2012 can at least demonstrate that they’ve a), taken some steps already, but b), that they’ve got a realistic plan that at the end of which they’ll be able to say they can achieve compliance.”

You can read more about the new cookie law and find additional information on compliance over on the ICO’s website.