PARIS (AFX) – Ubi Soft Entertainment SA could receive government support in its fight against the threat of a takeover by US video games giant Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS – news) , La Tribune newspaper reported without naming its sources. The government has been watchful for several months about the health of French video games studios, of which around 20 work for Ubisoft, the financial daily said. The heads of the studios fear that a purchase of Ubisoft by EA would lead to the disappearance of the last decision making centre in France for the video games industry, La Tribune added. Ubisoft...

from the turning-in-on-itself dept. wikinerd writes “Wikipedia is under criticism by its co-founder Larry Sanger who has left the project. He warns of a possible future fork due to Wikipedia’s Anti-Elitism and he presents his view on Wikipedia’s (lack of) reliability. New wikis on various subjects have already emerged, with some of them being complete forks of Wikipedia. Critical articles on Wikipedia are also being published by other sources.” Slashdot

A new Trojan horse – named Phel – that punishes users of Microsoft Windows XP operating system is in the wild. Security software firm Symantec has issued a bulletin warning Windows XP users to be on the look out for the program, which is distributed as an .html file. The malicious code can attack systems running XP Service Pack 2. The vuln was first found in October, and Microsoft is busy trying to catch up to it. Click Here “Microsoft is taking this vulnerability very seriously, and an update to correct the vulnerability is currently in development,” the company told ComputerWorld....

After you get past the beginner stage with Firefox, try this “power-user” trick to make it download pages faster by allowing multiple connections so it can download more than one file at a time. It’s only useful for broadband users, so if you’re still on dial-up you can just skip this one for now. Here’s something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up: 1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally...

The Mac Lover’s website ThinkSecret.com is reporting that Apple will introduce a “bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display at Macworld Expo on January 11 that will retail for $499.” A sub $500 G4 would put the Mac solidly in rent to own territory for the first time. Reportedly, the new Mac will be incredibly small and housed in a flat enclosure similar to the 1.73 inches of Apple’s Xserve and will ship without a monitor. Apple has always resisted entering the low end PC business. Instead, the company has focused on music, software, and hardware. According...

Greetings everybody The Suprnova Team would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year ! Also, everybody is still welcome to join us on irc (irc://irc.suprnova.org/suprnova.org) or on forums (www.suprnovaforums.net), but please remember, we are no longer offering torrents. You will not find any on IRC or on our forums. Interview with Sloncek about the Exeem project can be downloaded from the here! Right click and choose Save As. Thanks, Sloncek & the rest of the SuprNova team. Happy New Year from The Suprnova Team! IRC Servers: irc://irc.suprnova.org/suprnova.org :: Forums: http://www.suprnovaforums.net

My GMail cooky expired, so I ended up on the password page, and what did I see? A GMail 2004 recap: 2004 was quite a year for us! Here’s a quick recap: April 1st: Gmail launches. Some thought it was a joke, but we were serious about our gig of free space. (The real April Fool’s jokers wanted to give people the moon.) July 10th: Users can import contacts. Suddenly, keeping in touch with faraway friends becomes a lot easier. October 9th: We finally add ‘Save Drafts.’ No one is more excited than we are about never again having to answer “Why don’t you have a way...

MSN has reached a deal with New York City to provide live, online coverage of its New Year’s Eve festivities. Through MSN Video, people around the world can watch the famous Waterford crystal ball drop from the top of One Times Square for the 96th time, without having to leave their PC. “The Times Square 2005 MSN webcast demonstrates how interactive digital media can enable people to not only share but participate in the excitement,” said Adam Sohn, director of MSN. “It illustrates how digital media can provide coverage of live events beyond what a viewer can get on TV.” MSN...