Game violence is at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court's attention once more. The high court decided to reassess the the legality of letting states restrict the sales of violent games and listen to California's appeal regarding an overturned state law which did exactly that. Perhaps most surprisingly, this news comes only a week after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the sale of videos which include illegal acts of animal cruelty.
In 2005, the state of California enacted legislation which fined retailers $1000 for selling grossly violent video games to minors. Six other states followed suit with their own variation of the game regulations, but these laws were considered unconstitutional violations of free speech and ultimately rendered unenforceable by a federal judge. The Supreme Court was expected to ignore the appeal and simply allow the law to expire, but unexpectedly, they've decided to revisit the debate.
What does this mean exactly? We cannot be certain, but the video game industry has fought a long, difficult struggle to maintain protections similar to what books, music and art enjoy. If the Supreme Court rules that states can indeed regulate the sales of violent video games, there is little doubt that many states will enact their own laws, fines and penalties as a result. If the court rules the other way, then the status quo will be upheld and it will be business as usual.
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Microsoft releases public beta of Windows Home Server 'Vail'
Microsoft yesterday announced that the next generation of its Windows Home Server, codenamed Vail, has now entered the public beta phase. The company was fairly light on details but it did confirm the release includes feature improvements in three areas for consumers: Extending media streaming outside the home or office, multi-PC backup and restore, and a simplified setup and user experience.
The English-only beta is built on Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, unlike the previous version which was based on Windows Server 2003 32-bit, and includes a new software development kit (SDK) for anyone who wants to create add-in applications for Vail. The folks over at MediaServer.net have already posted their preview of the platform. The new media capabilities have a lot in common with Windows 7, offering transcoding, streaming, and remote playback to other networked machines -- all of which is managed through the Windows Home Server web front-end.
To try it out, users must register at Microsoft Connect. The install itself wipes the system clean and the minimum requirements include a 1.4 GHz x64 processor, 1GB RAM, and at least one 160 GB hard drive.
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