Jack Thompson, the US attorney and anti-video games activist, has been permanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court. This follows an approval from the Supreme Court for a recommendation to permanently disbar Thompson in July and includes an order for Thompson to pay legal fees amounting to nearly $45,000.

Thompson’s response was to send a press release to Kotaku stating that, “This past Friday Thompson filed a federal civil rights action against The Bar, the Supreme Court, and all seven of its Justices. This rush to disbarment is in retribution for the filing of that federal suit.”

In light of the warnings Thompson has been given in the past few years that he has come to the fore - including a reprimand by Judge Ronald Friedman in 2006 stating that he found statements made by Thompson “unprofessional and contemptible” - we think it was a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ it would come to this.

In a normal class certification hearing, the plaintiffs revealed an email between Nvidia senior VP of marketing, Dan Vivoli, and ATI’s president and COO, Dave Orton, which points to inflated prices and collusion. It reads: “I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field. $5 and $8 stocks are a result of no respect.”
While Nvidia’s supremacy has been clear over the last year, this email-gone-public is a huge blow to both videocard companies. Presiding judge Aslup stated the class certification will be further investigated.
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VoodooPC, longtime hardcore gaming company renowned for high-end desktops and laptops was recently shifted by parent company HP into a more refined role. The Envy 133 laptop is thinner than the Apple Airbook at its thickest point and is meant to be elegant yet powerful, and has a wide range of features to support it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Omen is a powerful to the point of absurdity.
The radical change from simply a gaming PC manufacturer to a mixture of super-hardcore desktops and expensively capable laptops was remarkable at the time, but understandable. Compared to its competition, VoodooPC was not performing well enough. Yet merging it with HP’s current consumer PC unit seems to be the end of VoodooPC as it were, and a reintroduction to HP’s gaming PC besides the Blackbird 002.
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One of the later adopters to gaming PC’s, Gateway has ended its brief run of customisable PC’s, gaming and otherwise. One of the first PC manufacturer’s to use online customisation, Gateway’s recent purchase by Acer, who relies heavily on selling products through resellers, will now only offer their designed platforms and will not allow for customisation.
While most users will not have a problem with this, gaming aficionados interested in Gateway’s machines may be unsatisfied with the parts given. Even the higher-end FX541XT uses the 8800GT in SLI, and there is no option to upgrade to a 9000 series card.



NVIDIA’s new video cards are set to receive a much-needed price drop in order to compete more effectively with AMD’s 4800 series. As we reported last week, the G200 cards were not selling as quickly as anticipated for a new GeForce release. Whilst this might attract new buyers, we can’t help but feel sorry for those who just shelled out up to £400 for their 280 only to see its price plummet by as much as £100!

Intel has now officially launched its Montevina platform which is set to make up the Centrino 2 architecture for high spec notebooks. Centrino branding has been a real hit for Intel, though with the new graphics subset scoring a ‘rip roaring’ 3DMark score of just 429, you will still want to make sure the words GeForce or Radeon are in your gaming notebook’s spec.
“In San Francisco on July 14, the Intel Montevina project morphed into the Intel® Centrino® 2 platform. Beyond jacking up performance and improving battery life, this beauty spread its wireless wings with the latest in Wireless-N (Draft-N) technology.”
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In a move that could see the UK move into the broadband fast lane for the first time, BT has pledged to lay enough fibre optic cabling to allow ten million customers access to ultra high speed broadband. Virgin customers in digital cable areas can of course already access the technology, which the media giant intends to crank up to 50Mbps before the end of the year.
“We will deliver a sea of fast broadband, with islands of super-fast broadband…[but] We need to be able to demonstrate that we can make a better return for shareholders than putting the money in the bank”
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Total PC Gaming has arrived in LA! The city of gang violence, hardcore pornography and, lets not forget, angels. We may have just endured a grueling 12 hour flight - sat next to a man who insisted on giving us a smell of his colon every 15 minutes - but we’re now in the LA Convention centre to bring you news and ramblings from this year’s E3 (the video game trade show that’s kind of lost its magic, but is going to stick around for a little while longer until someone starts-up something better).

For our latest coverage of the event you should direct yourself to our Blog page here

CD Projekt, developer of award-winning PC title The Witcher, is taking a retro step into distribution future with GOG.com, a digital platform that allows you to download classic titles for a very modest fee. These will be optimized for Windows XP and Vista, and will be available for a modest $5.99 or $9.99. More significantly, they’ll all be DRM free and once paid for, downloadable as many times as needed - giving GOG.com a clear advantage over Steam. CD Projekt has already secured licences for games from Interplay and Codemasters’ back catalogues and hopes to add Lucasarts titles such as Sam & Max and the Monkey Island games in the near future. Currently CD Projeckt have a tantlising line-up that includes Fallout, Fallout 2, MDK, Freespace 2, Operation Flashpoint: Game of the Year Edition and TOCA Race Driver 3, with their ultimate goal being to offer “a comprehensive collection of classic PC games from the 80s, 90s and 2000s.”

Check out our GOG.com competition on the TPCG forum.

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