1/7 - Kahuna notes: Last night, the #8 Michigan State basketball team (12-2) opened their home BigTen season against Ohio State (10-3). MSU controlled the first half 35-24, got outscored in the second half 34-32, but held of Ohio State for a 67-58 win.  ...  Lately I've been gaming on Tomb Raider Underworld. If you haven't had a look at this gorgeous romp, it's definitely worth the price. Meanwhile, the snow is piling up around here, another 3 inches last night. The high temps are sticking in the 20s. Onward...
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Gaming Scene News:.
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway review -  A-  Wow !
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Wolfenstein preview.
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Q&A - BioShock sequels.
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2008: The Year in Lists...  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26   Blue's News puts together some nice lists - Best Games of 2008, etc.
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Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize DRM.  It's about time the FTC addressed the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations and the fact that some DRM schemes cause damage to consumers' software (OS) and hardware. At this point, there definitely seems to be a potential need for government involvement to protect consumers.
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FlatOut Ultimate Carnage review -  7/8  Wow !
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Sword of the Stars: A Murder of Crows v1.6.4 patch.  (77.25mb)
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Hardware Scene News:.
MSI GeForce GTX 280 OC review -  92%  Oooh !
Kahuna notes: Hey, whaddaya know, it's the video card I snagged for my new rig. This baby is sweet: Its 240 core GPU is factory overclocked to 650MHz (standard clock is 600MHz) and its 1GB of DDR3 is factory overclocked to 2300MHz (standard clock is 2300MHz). Yummy!
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Asus debuts S121 netbook with Windows 7 and 512GB SSD.  The S121 is an ultra-thin, light  notebook just under an inch thick and is 11.7-inches by 8.3-inches, weighs about 3 lbs and carries a touchscreen that runs a specialized software Asustek developed for easy touch navigation. The use of Asus's touch mode software on Microsoft's Windows 7 OS shows how closely the two companies are working together. Oooo... That does sound sweet.
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Eee Keyboard: An entire touchscreen home theater PC.  The Asus Eee Keyboard features wireless HDMI, it's a "fully functional PC" with full QWERTY and a mini secondary touchscreen. Asus was vague as to if/when we'll actually see the Eee Keyboard come to market.
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AMD's Athlon Neo processor will take on Intel's Atom.  As the netbook platform takes shape this year at CES, AMD is giving a more focused picture of what the inside of that platform could look like... but not too focused, at least not for a few days yet.
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Faster Serial ATA coming this year.  The SATA 6Gb/s (SATA3) standard is coming in the second quarter, replacing SATA2 which was 3Gb/s (the original SATA standard was 1.5Gb/s). SATA3 is backward compatible with SATA1 and SATA2 - same connector and cable as before, so it will automatically adjust the speed based on the device support. Of course, the SATA3 bandwidth is much greater than actual transfer rates due to the support hardware not keeping up with SATA progress.
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Razer Moray Noise Isolating Earbud Headphones review -  Tops  Wow !
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Tech Scene & Miscellaneous News:.
iTunes Plus opens up downloads to all.  In a smart move based on the deals leaked yesterday for DRM-free iTunes, Apple is opening up access to iTunes for any portable music player. Yep, iTunes will no longer be the exclusive domain of Apple products. Apple is calling the new format iTunes Plus and it is based on the AAC format at 256 Kbit/s. So if your player can handle that format, you're in business.
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The Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Program.  Here we go... Another dose of MS's convoluted reasoning regarding upgrading from Vista to Win7, which is really only a thinly disguised strategy to part you from an unjustifiably large chunk of you hard earned money.  TechARP has a collection of dates regarding MS's update program. The upgrade program concerns upgrade paths from Vista to Win7, and basically entails that when you buy a Vista machine after July 1 2009, you will get a free upgrade to Win7 once it's released. The information also confirms a number of versions for Win7.
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Cloud-Based email cheapest enterprise option.  In a new report from Forrester, a cost analysis of cloud-based email systems in enterprises, such as Google Apps or Yahoo!'s Zimbra, shows that cloud-based email services are cheaper than running email on-premise for all companies with less than 15,000 employees. What's more, Google Apps is significantly cheaper than both on-premise solutions and other cloud-based email services - even for very large enterprises. This is going to be trouble for Microsoft, who may be forced to drastically reduce its pricing for Exchange Online.
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Rumor: Microsoft readying free POP3 access for Hotmail.  Hey, I remember a time when I could check my Hotmail via POP3 for free, and then greedy ass Bad Billy Gates pulled the plug on that and tried to make everyone pay for it ($19.95 per year as part of its Hotmail Plus service.). Well... That didn't work. As for this rumor, we'll see.
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