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Intel and AMD are fierce competitors in the world of chipmaking, but in recent years they've taken the fight to the courtroom. AMD has sued Intel for antitrust violations (allegations that have been picked up by a number of governments), while Intel fired back by claiming that AMD had violated a licensing agreement for x86 technology. This morning, however, the two companies made a surprise announcement: they've reached an agreement that settles all legal issues between them.

Out of this settlement come four major things for AMD:

1. $1.25 billion in cold, hard cash.
2. Intel will stop doing things that they and AMD agree they shouldn’t be doing.
3. The right to not have to produce x86 CPUs in-house. AMD can go fabless.
4. The right to have their x86 processors fabricated anywhere of AMD’s choosing.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

As a fan of the ridiculous acrobatics in the games, one of the aspects I was specifically watching for in the trailer was the stuntwork. As expected, the action is heavy on the CG, but as a result the free running in the trailer is as unbelievable as in the games, if not more so. Some specific moves shown off in the trailer will be familiar to fans of the games, while others are so fantastic that a game would be hard pressed to replicate them outside of a cut-scene or quick time event. Suffice it to say that I was pleased with the quality and density of acrobatic stunts in the trailer, and I hope that the movie maintains both.

As far as combat, there is not much to say. Much like combat took a backseat in The Sands of Time videogame, it wasn't featured particularly prominently in the movie trailer. I can say that bows and arrows are confirmed, as is at least one swordfight. At least!

What dominated the trailer, however, was the newly scripted story, which borrows elements from The Sands of Time trilogy (most obviously, the Dagger of Time), but otherwise introduces a new prince, a new female lead, and an original plot. The trailer naturally spoils very little of the film, but it showed enough to be clear that it won't simply be a silver screen retelling of the videogames.

In terms of data on current human scales, a yottabyte is nearly infinite (though I'm sure the NSA will manage to fill the thing in like 2 weeks, and iPods will come with yottabytes in just a few months).

To be fair, the yottabyte figure is just one estimate generated by a Pentagon think tank. The facility could hold a mere hundreds of petabytes. But either way, the prospect is as unsustainable as it is frightening. This one facility will burn through as much electricity as the entirety of Salt Lake City.

All of this data comes from the book The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid. And while the paranoid among you may read it, I, MARK WILSON, HAVE NO REASON TO FEAR THE NSA'S INVOLVEMENT IN MY LIFE OR INFORMATION AT ALL. [NYBooks via CrunchGear]

Well, triple resurrections, if you also include the upcoming sequel/relaunch. For the purposes of this post though, it’s vintage Mechwarring. Not been able to try this myself yet — mainly due to the torturously slow proprietary bitorrent client necessary to download the thing — but there’s a whole lot afoot in Mechwarrior land. First, a major new version of a free remake of Mechwarrior 2 made in Blitzbasic. It’s called Assault Tech 1: Battletech. Tech tech? Tech. Tech! Apparently, it now looks better than the original, thanks to a revamped DirectX7 engine. Oh, mighty seven. Decide for yourself in the videos below. As an additional ray of robotic rapture, the MW fan/mod site behind AT1:BT, MekTek.net, are also gearing up to re-release the rather splendid Mechwarrior 4, in its DRM-free, modern-Windowsed entirety.

Speaking at BAFTA’s Annual Video Games Lecture last night, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux revealed what he believes to be the 5 most revolutionary games from the past 20 years.

In a typically passionate and engaging presentation, Molyneux spoke of the need for designers to defy perceived wisdom and custom, saying, “The best innovations come from challenging the foundation stones of conventional wisdom.” The 5 games selected by Molyneux were specifically chosen for their success in doing just that.

The first title Molyneux highlighted for discussion was Dune 2, an early RTS. Molyneux said Dune 2 took gaming away from twitch-based reactions and instead encouraged a slower, more cerebral approach. Furthermore, alongside its innovative multiplayer, Dune 2 could be played in a variety of ways. Terms to describe these differing play styles, such as ‘turtle’ (where the player is overwhelmingly defensive), are still used in gaming to this day. According to the man himself, Molyneux is a turtle.

The Internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the expected approval this week of international domain names – or addresses – that can be written in languages other than English, an official said Monday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN – the non-profit group that oversees domain names – is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. Domain names are the monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.

One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board at this week's gathering is whether to allow for the first time entire Internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters. That could potentially open up the Web to more people around the world as addresses could be in characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic – in which Russian is written.

I’ve been playing a lot of Killzone 2 this week – which, by the way, I highly recommend – and, in many ways, it’s really just an interactive B-movie. The scripted bits that carry along the in-game action consist almost exclusively of tough-guy cliches pieced together from the last forty years of action movies, comic books, and war films. It’s silly, outrageous, over-the-top, and incredibly entertaining – just like a good B-movie should be.

Metal Gear Solid 4 makes the case even more. Like previous MGS games, it’s highly cinematic, with long, relatively complex cut scenes driving the action – in many stretches, there’s more movie than interactivity. And, like so many classic sci-fi B-movies, its story, about a near future in which war, conducted by a web of private mercenary firms, has become humanity’s dominant economic activity, is driven by a simplistic contemporary allegory. MGS4 is less to my liking than Killzone 2 – despite the more complex gameplay, the scripted bits are just too long and too ridiculous for my taste – but it makes the link between games and a certain type of overblown genre movie even more clear.

In a statement, Microsoft and Fox said they hope to "bring the old 'Texaco Star Theater'-style sponsorships into the 21st century." MacFarlane, creator and primary voice of "Family Guy," and Borstein, voice of the series' Lois character, teamed with the folks from Microsoft, as well as Redmond's ad agencies--Universal McCann, and Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, to create the show.

"While the way people watch TV has evolved, their desire to be entertained, and marketers' need to deliver compelling content, hasn't changed," the companies said. "Microsoft and Fox are joining forces to showcase how the power and simplicity of Windows 7 can enhance the content Fox viewers enjoy most, whether it's comedy, drama, sports, or reality programming on TV or on the Web."

Microsoft and Fox also plan to put on a 12-week college tour allowing students to try Windows 7 and tying in outdoor-movie nights hosted by the Stewie and Brian characters of "Family Guy."

In July, John Big Dawg Thompson, who is the mask-wearing pack leader of Cleveland's Dawg Pound, filed a complaint against EA in the Cuyahoga Country Court of Common Pleas. He thinks EA used his Big Dawg persona in Madden NFL 09. An image of a bug-eyed dogface mask, orange hardhat, oversize dog bone, and a Browns jersey with the number "98” can be seen in the crowd in the game.

They spent months developing an app called 'Twitch', when it came to Atomic Antelope registering the app's name, it couldn't. Twitch had been already taken and Antomic Antelope had no way of contacting the person who had registered the name. Apparently one developer who almost a year ago realized what was happening and decided to grab "dozens and dozens of good sounding applications names."

None of these activities has made him many friends on Facebook, where there are literally hundreds of groups -- most with just a handful of members -- dedicated to him. The less-offensive sounding ones have names such as I Hate Jack Thompson, Stop Jack Thompson, and Disbar Jack Thompson.

But Thompson says that some of the posts are dangerous and have caused him "great harm and distress."

For example, he cites the group Jack Thompson should be smacked across the face with an Atari 2600 in his lawsuit.

In the episode's opening scene, he's in crunch mode, just three months before his game is supposed to ship. His team consists of two dudes playtesting the game, one of whom observes "the code is a little janky". It's akin to "tightening up the graphics on level three".

The episode sports typically implausible footage of the game itself, created for an audience who wouldn't know a videogame from a cutscene. This game is about a monkey, a lizard, and a catman fighting swarms of bats, ideally with a megablaster (pictured). It's played using a VR visor, a rifle peripheral, and some sort of Natal-style body sensor. Dig it.

Two random people can walk in off the street and start playing three months before it ships. The developer is also apparently an animator. At one point, he explains that he dissected (!) birds to get the animation right. During a scene in which he has fevered hallucinations, he imagines the real world is the game world. He wields a 32 ounce soda as a grenade, managing a direct hit on Omar Epps that would have gibbed him.

Back in the pre-Joystiq days of 2003, cavemen spoke of preliminary plans for a MechWarrior movie, to be produced by Dean "Oops, I made Godzilla" Devlin who referred to the opportunity as "a real passion project" ... about giant robots. Of course, we know nothing ever came of that passion; however, with a reboot on the horizon, another MechWarrior film is "in development" at former Disney chief (and apparent Robot Jox fanboy) Michael Eisner's The Tornante Company, a trusted source told Joystiq.

Eisner owned the rights to the franchise through a series of acquisitions, series creator Jordan Weisman told Gamasutra last month: "WizKids bought FASA, and then Topps bought WizKids, and then [Michael] Eisner bought Topps." Perhaps seeing an opportunity to capitalize on the upcoming video game, our source tells us that a movie is "in development" and that the writer is one Mr. Michael Gordon, credited with screenplays for 300, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and an "in development" EverQuest movie.

EA and EA DICE are asking that the trademarks “THE EDGE”, “GAMER’S EDGE”, “EDGE”, “CUTTING EDGE” and “EDGE” (second registration covering a different range of goods), held by Edge Games Inc, be cancelled.

EA explain their interest in the “MIRROR’S EDGE” mark and say that since September 2008 Edge Games has been continuously threatening to sue over an alleged violation of their “family of registered EDGE marks.”

They explain that Edge Games Inc is the successor company to Edge Interactive Media Inc, and point out Langdell’s continuous role as CEO of both companies. They also point out that the EDGE marks were previously owned by Edge Interactive Media Inc.

13. Rock hammers

Not to be confused with tremendous mallets, these things are faster to wield and don’t leave you exhausted after two or three swings. Used for busting rocks, they can easily be repurposed to bust zombies.
Advantages: Combines all the best qualities of the 1911A1 and the pump-action shotgun.
Disadvantages: None. Anyone who suggests otherwise eats babies.
Tips: Oh, OK, these weapons do not make an appearance in Zombieland, but damn it, they were so darned effective in Streets of Fire – anything that works well in that movie is bound to work well anywhere!

Mac clone-maker Psystar is a bit like the streotypical sitcom character that always comes up with wacky ideas, much to the dismay of the studio audience. Its latest brainstorm? Despite being sued for copyright infringement by Apple, going bankrupt, and changing lawyers midstream, the Florida-based company has announced that it’s licensing the virtualization technology that allows generic PCs to run Mac OS X.

The technology–part of which is the company's Darwin Universal Boot Loader–would allow a computer to run up to six different operating systems, including Windows 7, Vista, several Linux distributions, and Mac OS X–including Snow Leopard. Psystar even includes “Safe Update” technology to allow OS X to receive normal updates. The company will allow licensees to get their desktop, server, or mobile hardware “Psystar Certified.”

The anonymous campaign against Scientology, better known among its participants as Project Chanology, continues to this day. In the months since it launched "Message to Scientology," Project Chanology has employed a variety of tactics, including pickets, pranks, and propaganda that ranges from the purely informative to the ferociously satirical. It has waxed and waned and waned some more, and yet, improbably, it has endured, evolving into a peculiarly instructive case study in the dynamics of online protest. Project Chanology may well be the first movement to realize the kind of ad hoc, loosely coupled social activism that many have hoped the ad hoc, loosely coupled architecture of the Internet would engender. But it's also the first one founded on the principles of the most obnoxious innovation that architecture ever produced: trolling.

To troll is to post deliberately incendiary content to a discussion forum or other online community–say, kitten-torture fantasies on a message board for cat lovers–for no other reason than to stir up chaos and outrage. Trolling is (for the troll, at least) a source of amusement. But for Anonymous it has long been more like a way of life. Study the pages of the Encyclopedia Dramatica wiki, where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend, along with links to eye-gougingly horrific images of mutilation, sexual perversity, and, yes, kittens in blenders.

Wait. What? Trent Reznor? As in "Mr. I'll Give Away My Music," "Mr. Brutal Honesty," Mr. NINE INCH NAILS? What's he doing on Joystiq?

Prior to taking the concert stage this month, The Trent Reznor, along with NIN Creative Director Rob Sheridan, opened up to us about their gaming pasts, the direction they see the industry headed in, and whether or not Trent will have a role in shaping that future.

Continue reading for Joystiq's first-ever NINterview ...

Let's start off with an easy question: What kind of gamer are you?

Trent: I am old, so I was there from the beginning. You know, from the first Pong machine.

You're going to have soldier your way through the default mode, sliced into days which progress through the same seven levels over and over, gradually layering in each new zombie, weapon, and game mechanic. It builds slowly and it takes a long time. 28 days later, you'll finally get the last weapon. A terrible boss fight comes a few days after that. And then you've still got 25 levels to go.

Technology can help mitigate the new dangers presented by online dating and the "hook-up" culture of today's youth, as well as the long-present threat of sexual misconduct by trusted authority figures, according to three companies presenting at the DEMO conference on Tuesday.

One of the companies, Date Check, lets people do quick background checks on potential dates and mates from their mobile phones.

"Look up before you hook up," said John Arnold, executive vice-president of Intelius Inc., which is offering the service.