Surprise:
Middle-aged women are gamers
While men may be glued to the TV, women apparently can’t
unchain
from the PC. America Online released a study this week showing that U.S.
women over the age of 40 squander almost 50 percent more of their time
playing online games than men and are more likely to make it a daily habit
than men or teens. AOL said of those women over 40 who had created
friendships from their online addiction, more than 20 percent made these
virtual acquaintances real-life buddies. It doesn’t seem to bother these
women that their time is consumed with gaming; in fact, 44 percent of the women over 40 who responded said they
spend less time watching TV or movies, reading or being physically active
due to playing games. The online survey was conducted by Digital Marketing
Services with 3,613 respondents between mid-December and mid-January.
AOL
Latin America is bleeding deeply
America Online isn’t doing well in any language. This
week AOL Latin America Inc. reported diminishing revenue, fewer members
and a smaller net loss during the last full quarter compared with the same
period the year before.
Fourth quarter 2003
saw a drop in total revenue by 16 percent, with subscription revenue down
by 10 percent and advertising and e-commerce revenue falling 57 percent,
according to a statement filed Tuesday. AOL Latin America finished out
2003 with 462,000 members, a noticeable change from the 1.18 million
members that it closed with in 2002. The company removed members who
didn’t pay promptly but didn’t recruit enough new members to offset
the loss.
Microsoft
admits critical Windows flaw
Microsoft Corp. has laid an unintentional welcome mat for
hackers. The company said this week that
a critical flaw in
the majority of the various versions of the Windows operating system could
easily let them in. Although no computers reportedly have
been broken into via Windows, Microsoft warned users of
Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that they are
at risk. The company has offered software updates to fix the software
glitch, which could allow personal user information to be stolen. The
company that uncovered the flaw, eEye Digital Security, condemned
Microsoft’s six-month delay in finding a solution to the problem. Last
year Microsoft took on a new monthly patch release program, which the
company endorsed as a quick fix for security bugs. Users can download the
patch for the software flaw from Microsoft’s web site.
Finnish
judge orders damages for Alanis
Piracy has its price in Finland. A Finnish court ordered a
24-year-old man to hand over 7,000 euros ($8,965) to Canadian rock star
Alanis Morissette for spreading unauthorized recordings of her shows
online. The judge found that between 1999 and 2003, the man had traded
more than 1,900 bootleg tapings of concerts with other bootleggers through
his web site.
Legal experts said
the ruling might be the first in Europe involving a person who swapped
illegal recorded material to add to his private collection and was found
guilty. Similar Europe cases
have been limited to prosecuting those who had attempted to
make a profit from the bootlegs. The man had tapings of other artists, but
he had a total of seven Morissette concerts.
Now
available, the full-length Paris sex tape
If you somehow missed your first chance to see it, get
ready for a longer, more expensive Paris Hilton sex tape. Yesterday the
full 37-minute show became available online, bigger and presumably better,
since it costs $50, than the four-minute tape that caused the Hilton
heiress so much trouble last year. The improved cut features Hilton and
her then-boyfriend, Rick Solomon, getting ready to go out and talking
somewhat dirty to each other while Paris struts in thigh-high boots and
lingerie.
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