In-Fusio sues Microsoft over mobile 'Halo'

French mobile game developer In-Fusio has sued Microsoft, accusing the company of breach of contract over the mobile version of Halo.

In-Fusio announced at the 2005 CTIA IT Wireless and Entertainment trade show that it would bring the blockbuster sci-fi shooter franchise to mobile phones as part of an exclusive three-year deal with Microsoft.

More than a year after the initial agreement and with no Halo game available for mobile phones, In-Fusio filed suit against Microsoft in U.S. District Court in Seattle last month, charging the company with refusing to approve game designs while still demanding payment for an exclusive license.

"In the last 11 months, Microsoft has approved no fully developed In-Fusio Halo game designs, ignoring and then refusing to accept In-Fusio's game design concepts with little or no explanation and leaving In-Fusio little basis to revise its concepts to obtain Microsoft's approval," the suit reads.

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Apple guru combats month of bugs

A software engineer has vowed to quickly provide a patch for flaws in Apple Computer software that are set to be made public by researchers Kevin Finisterre and the pseudonymous LMH this month.

The vulnerability researchers' "Month of Apple Bugs" project, launched Monday, promises to announce a hole in Apple software on each day in January. However, a senior open-source developer with extensive experience working for the Mac maker says he is attempting to offer a fix for each flaw found.

Landon Fuller was an engineer in Apple's BSD Technology Group and is one of the principal architects of Darwin, an open-source, Unix-like operating system designed to work alone or as a core set of components for Mac OS X. He has already offered patches for the two vulnerabilities published by the Month of Apple Bugs project so far.

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SanDisk rolls out flash hard drives for laptops

SanDisk wants to replace the hard drive in notebooks with flash memory, a swap that it says will make thin laptops faster and more reliable.

The switch, however, will cost you a few hundred dollars more.

SanDisk on Thursday released a 32GB drive for commercial notebooks that stores information on flash memory chips rather than the magnetic platters that make up a traditional hard drive. The drive is available only to manufacturers, and the company declined to give out pricing or identify any notebook makers that will adopt it, but SanDisk said notebooks sporting the drive could come out in the first half of 2007.


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