"None of the three new game consoles – Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3, and Microsoft's Xbox 360 – will dominate the market in the next five years like the PS2 dominated the last cycle, but the Wii will outship and outsell the 360 and PS3 in 2007 and 2008, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

IDC said the Xbox 360 was the best selling current generation console for 2006 because it enjoyed a full year lead in the market. The battle is heating up between the 360 and PS3, as the two gaming manufacturers target the same hardcore/enthusiast gamer to dominate the market, stated the research firm."

"Fighting Vista's piracy protection? Perhaps trying to guess a product activation key will solve the problem.

A "brute force" key generator that randomly tries a variety of 25-digit codes until it finds one that works is now available, according to KezNews, a Windows news Web site.

The tool, available for download from KezNews, can use up quite a lot of computer processor resources and will check about 20,000 possible keys an hour, according to the Web site. One user reported finding three usable product keys in five hours."

" Why bring up CPUs? When we first heard about Larrabee, it was undecided where the thing would slot in, CPU or GPU. It could have gone the way of Keifer/Kevet, or been promoted to full CPU status. There was a lot of risk in putting out an insanely fast CPU that can't do a single thread at speed to save its life.

The solution would be to plop a Merom or two in the middle, but seeing as the chip was already too hot and big, that isn't going to happen, so instead a GPU was born. I would think that the whole GPU notion is going away soon as the whole concept gets pulled on die, or more likely adapted as tiles on a "Fusion like" marchitecture.

In any case, the whole idea of a GPU as a separate chip is a thing of the past. The first step is a GPU on a CPU like AMD's Fusion, but this is transitional. Both sides will pull the functionality into the core itself, and GPUs will cease to be. Now do you see why Nvidia is dead?

So, in two years, the first steps to GPUs going away will hit the market. From there, it is a matter of shrinking and adding features, but there is no turning back. Welcome the CGPU. Now do you understand why AMD had to buy ATI to survive?"

"WASHINGTON — There are 14 regions of previously undetected lakes hidden beneath parts of the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet that are continuously dumping their contents into the surrounding sea, NASA scientists reported Thursday.

The researchers acknowledge that they don't know what role these lakes play in draining ice away from the sheet, but its collapse is one of the most extreme fears in global warming scenarios. Antarctica holds about 90% of the world's ice and 70% of its reservoir of fresh water, NASA says."

"Researchers at Symantec Corp. have devised a series of "proof-of-concept" exploits that show how an Internet user running any one of several name-brand, $50 - $100 routers under the default factory settings could be in a world of trouble in a very short time, just by browsing to a malicious Web site. One of the easiest ways to commandeer a factory-set wireless router remotely is through the use of Javascript, a powerful Web programming language that makes it easy for Web sites to monkey with or otherwise manipulate a computer's settings.

For example, a nasty site could use Javascript to change the default settings on a router so that anytime the victim tries to visit a bank Web site he or she is silently redirected to a counterfeit site set up to steal online banking credentials (this is a type of phishing attack known as "pharming.") Or, the attackers could poke holes in the router's built-in firewall to allow certain types of traffic to slip through."

"BOSTON -- Some legal experts say prosecutors will have a hard time proving that two men intended to cause a scare when they planted blinking electronic devices around Boston in a publicity stunt for a cartoon show.

They say the key difficulties prosecutors face are demonstrating that the men intended to cause fear, and that the devices, which depict a cartoon character, looked dangerous. The state must prove both to win felony convictions for placing a hoax device, the experts said."

"Citing "complex legal issues," EBay Inc. has decided to yank auctions of virtual items garnered from popular online games such as "EverQuest" and "World of Warcraft."

"We can't say definitely if it's legal or illegal," EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said. "It's complex. And when something is complex like this, we have a history of disallowing the items."

For years, players of online games have traded unreal goods for real money. The items, which are often difficult to come by, can give players an edge in games."