US wins world gaming crown

The US has been declared the top gaming nation at the World Cyber Games.

Of the more than 700 players who took part in the gaming tournament, America`s 16 players won two gold medals and one silver to top the national rankings at the gaming event, reports the BBC. South Korea came second with Brazil in third place.

The World Cyber Games is widely regarded as the Olympics of the computer gaming world and was held in Singapore from 16 to 20 November. Competitors qualified for the finals by winning national events in the 67 countries competing.

The so-called "Zero Hour" event, Microsoft`s Xbox 360 launch party specifically for gamers, took place in a 200 000 square-foot hangar in a desert town an hour outside of Los Angeles on Sunday night, reports CNet.

The party was held for 30 hours and the over 2 000 gamers who attended had the chance to be the first to get their hands on an Xbox 360, and to try out the 18 launch titles.

Microsoft will ask international standards body Ecma International today to certify Open XML as an international standard for reading and storing documents, a move it hopes will keep its Office software from being removed from thousands of computers in Massachusetts government.

The state plans to have millions of documents stored in OpenDocument by January 2007, reports SeattlePI. OpenDocument would enable records to be read by a variety of software packages other than Microsoft Office, which now holds more than 90% of the global market in productivity software.

Microsoft hopes to win an important endorsement of the format before its release of the next version of its Office software, Office 12, next year.

A California-based digital-rights group and the Texas attorney general sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment yesterday for selling CDs with anti-piracy software that allegedly leaves computers vulnerable to hackers and viruses, reports the LA Times.

Embarrassed executives at Sony BMG, the nation`s second-largest record label, last week asked music retailers to pull the 52 albums that use the software and said the company would recall as many as five million CDs.