British retailers start online sales early

REUTERS/Paul HackettLONDON (Reuters) - British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores.Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT....

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China may require real name registration for internet access

BEIJING (Reuters) - China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity.A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for...

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Tajikistan blocks scores of websites as election looms

DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Tajikistan blocked access to more than 100 websites on Tuesday, in what a government source said was a dress rehearsal for a crackdown on online dissent before next year's election when President Imomali Rakhmon will again run for office.Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He...

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Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.'s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies...

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Netflix blames Amazon for Christmas Eve outage

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc's streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas Day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies...

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Vatican takes first spot in Internet domain name draw

The Vatican has come out in first place in a long-awaited draw to expand the Internet address system with new domain names that go beyond the usual .com, .org or .net endings.ICANN, the corporation that oversees the Internet address system, announced this week the domain name .catholic written in Chinese characters will be the first bid it considers in a drive to expand and reorganize sites on the...

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Vatican says pope beats Justin Bieber on re-tweets

Pope Benedict, white-haired, 85, and a neophyte to social media site Twitter, has beaten out 18-year old heartthrob Justin Bieber to set a percentage record for re-tweeting by his followers, the Vatican said on Thursday.The Vatican newspaper said that as of noon Italian time on Thursday the pope had 2.1 million followers on Twitter, eight days after his first tweet was sent.While Canadian singer-songwriter...

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Saudi website editor could face death for apostasy-rights group

The editor of a Saudi Arabian website could be sentenced to death after a judge cited him for apostasy and moved his case to a higher court, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.Raif Badawi, who started the Free Saudi Liberals website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in June, Human Rights Watch said.Badawi had initially been charged with the less serious...

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Sri Lanka arrests 100 Chinese for cyber fraud, police say

 Sri Lanka on Saturday arrested at least 100 Chinese nationals accused of an internet fraud scheme targeting people in their home country, a police spokesman said.The accused, all in Sri Lanka on tourist visas, are suspected of hacking into computers in China and then demanding their owners transfer them money, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakodi told Reuters.Chinese police requested help from...

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British retailers start online sales early

British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores.Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT. Debenhams has already started its online...

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Syrian rebels now have a tank operated with a PlayStation controller

As Syria's rebels work to overthrow the tank-equipped Assad regime, they've learned that it helps to have tanks of their own. They deserve bonus points for integrating video game technology. This is no exaggeration. Have a look at the opposition forces' "100 percent made in Syria" armored vehicle, the Sham II. RELATED: What Dennis Kucinich Really Said in Syria Named for ancient Syria and assembled...

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The Wii U uses less than half the power of the Xbox 360 and the PS3

Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Wii prided itself for being a super energy-efficient console that ran nearly silent and sipped very little electricity. And although Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 was originally a loud monster with a penchant for Red-Ring-of-Death-ing itself, the amount of power it consumed was never as much as Sony’s (SNE) launch PlayStation 3, which used more power than a refrigerator. Eurogamer...

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'Angry Birds' Movie Arrives in 2016 From Producer of 'Despicable Me'

Rovio Entertainment celebrated the three-year anniversary of the Angry Birds franchise Tuesday by releasing 30 new levels for the game and announcing details for the Angry Birds movie. The still untitled 3D computer generated feature film will debut in mid-2016 with Despicable Me producer John Cohen taking the production helm. Former Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel, a senior adviser to Rovio,...

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Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4 might not launch until 2014

Nintendo (NTDOY) says its kickstarted the next generation of video game consoles with the Wii U. But considering its graphics and processing power are comparable to Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 and Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3, hardcore gamers are holding out for the next Xbox, tentatively dubbed “Xbox 720,” and next-generation PlayStation, tentatively called PS4. Rumors insist Microsoft and Sony will...

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Microsoft plots living room domination with 43 new entertainment apps for Xbox 360

Game consoles are no longer simply for video games, as evidenced by last week’s announcement that the PlayStation 3 is the top Netflix (NFLX) streaming device of the year. Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s (MSFT) chief marketing officer for its Interactive Entertainment Division, said this past March that Xbox 360 owners were spending more hours watching online entertainment than playing online games. And...

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