Japanese electronics manufacturers Sharp and Hitachi, makers of the LCD screens used in the Nintendo DS, are under investigation for price-fixing, the Times Online reported today.

The headquarters of both companies were raided by the Japanese Fair Trade Commission yesterday in an effort to gather potential evidence of an illegal price-fixing arrangement.

Sharp, the original supplier of Nintendo DS screens, was joined by Hitachi when demand for the DS skyrocketed a year after the handheld's release.

While both companies confirmed the probe, neither issued any further comment on the investigation. The Japanese government recently enacted a "whistle-blower law" which grants legal immunity to the first company within a price-fixing cartel to come clean.

As with any high-profile game release these days, a few scandals have cropped up in the wake of Halo 3's launch last Tuesday. Apart from some quickly resolved Xbox Live issues, two other subjects keep coming up: whether or not Halo 3 actually runs in high definition and Halo developer Bungie's future with Microsoft.

640p vs. HD
The high definition argument initially came about as a result of some dedicated "jaggie counters" who claimed that Halo 3 rendered vertically at 640 pixels instead of 720. Since the game doesn't actually run in 720p--technically the picture is scaled from 640p to the user-configured preferred resolution--these folks and countless others claimed that Bungie had deceived the gaming populace into buying a game that wasn't really HD. Therefore, they wanted Bungie to, among other things, remove any mentions of HD, 720p and higher resolutions from the game and other relevant materials.

The Explanation
Bungie later confirmed the brewing scandal in its latest weekly update. "The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very... Read more

Continuing this morning's progress towards resolving Aspect Ratiogate 07 and DRMgate 07, BioShock creative director Ken Levine has informed Joystiq that the game's oft-criticized SecuROM copyright protection will eventually be removed.

"At some point we'll move back from online activation," Levine stated. "If people want to play BioShock ten years from now, they'll be able to play it." Based on his wording, it's presumed that SecuROM activation will be disabled when retail sales of the game are no longer a pressing factor.

Levine then ended the brewing Betrayaltongate 07 scandal, conclusively vowing that there is no PlayStation 3 version of the Xbox 360 and PC game. "I promise you, there is no secret plan about the PS3 that we're keeping from people," he said. "There's no PS3 development going on that we're hiding."

As for the PS3 mention in one of the demo's configuration files? ... Read more

Well it looks like Nintendo has given in and will now be offering a program to replace wrist straps on Wii remotes for those of you who are afraid you might throw the thing at your TV or friends and family. Apparently there are 3.2 million wrist straps out there in the wild now that Nintendo is offering to replace. Users in Europe and Australia have noted that systems are already coming packaged with newer, stronger straps.

"People tended to get a bit excited, especially while playing Wii sports, and in some cases the control would come loose from their hands," Minagawa said. "The new strap will be almost twice as thick."

I've yet to see a situation where this can possibly happen but I guess when there are millions of remotes out there a one or three or five in a million chance for something to go wrong adds up. Also, people are clumsy and some are just plain dumb. (Maarten & I)

The hardware scandal of the day is over at Overclockers.au. According to an anonymous source SiS may be cheating a bit to inflate benchmarks.

Since its the topic that wont die, here's the latest on the presidential scandal. With a re-count of all 67 counties in of Florida the new numbers come up with only 327 votes between Bush and Gore. Thats it right? Done? Oh no...

The Bush campaign reacted immediately, calling on the Gore campaign to give up. The Gore campaign responded saying, "This is just the beginning."

We've got those 19,000 throw out votes to deal with, the absentee votes to deal with, and lawsuits to deal with. Its not over, and I doubt it will ever be over. Whoever comes out on top of this will have this hanging over their head for quite a while.

Ah yes, this is where its gonna start getting ugly. As most people know by now the US presidential election is currently in limbo awaiting a re-count in Florida. Well it looks like 19,000 votes got disqualified because of a 'faulty ballot'. On top of that, 3 lawsuits have been filed in federal court by voters who were deprived of their voting rights due to the allegedly confusing ballots. Oh thats not all, get this:

The NAACP has asked the Justice Department to investigate alleged voting irregularities involving minorities in Florida. [...] At least 50 people went door to door Wednesday in Palm Beach County, asking residents to sign a petition for a new presidential election.

Somehow I think no matter what happens, half the country is gonna be pissed off. Nothing like a presidential scandal when we havent even decided on the president yet.

A bit of a stink has been going on over ATI not being so informative about the clocking down of their OEM Radeon cards, HardOCP has the scoop and a word from ATI themselves on what they are doing.

I've been following this story (and a followup)for a couple of days and some more has happened to it recently. The encription code for DVD was hacked a little while ago by some programmers in Norway. Since then a couple of stories have shown up on ZDNet and CNN (Thanks SkilSare). As well as this note from the guy who did it I spotted on /. who is of course now wrangling with them lawyers.

Oh yeah, while on that subject, My list of DVD must haves: Big Lebowski, Grosse Point Blank, Austin Powers, Matrix, Seven, 5th Element, Pulp Fiction, Something About Mary. Oh yeah, and I'd love it if they came out with Braveheart already, damn.