11/18 - Kahuna notes:  Yep, I skipped the news post yesterday. Huntster stopped by around 10:30 to check out my Jackson PC-1 - he heard about the sustainer and just had to check it out as there are none in stock around here. BobbyD called while we were rippin' away, he was in town for a visit and wanted to meet for lunch. So out we went. We blew the afternoon chatting and goofing around. Kahunette's been having fun showing her new ring (I mentioned in Saturday's blog) to friends at work.  ...  Last night the #2 MSU basketball team (2-0) hosted Gonzaga (1-1). Gonzaga always gives MSU a good game and last night was no exception. At one point in the first half, Gonzaga and a 13 point lead, but State battled back and won the game 75-71. Next up, MSU (2-0) hosts Toledo (0-1) Friday at 6:30pm.  ...  I talked to ChiefKahuna today. After his latest hospital stay, a new test finally revealed his problem - the right side of his diaphragm is paralyzed, making his breathing more difficult than it should be. He's basically functioning with one lung. Poor guy. The doctors are hoping some specialized physically therapy with bring back some function to the paralyzed portion of his diaphragm and make it easier for him to breath. I hope so. Onward . . .
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Gaming Scene News:.
Left 4 Dead 2 review -  A  Primo !
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Command & Conquer 4 Multiplayer preview.
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Q&A - Star Trek Online.
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BioShock 2 pics.
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Dragon Age: Origins review -  7.5/10  Hmmm...
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Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising demo.  (1.39gb, gargantuan!)
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Hardware Scene News:.
Razer Orochi Mouse review -  9.16/10  Oooh !
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AMD/ATi claims fastest graphics card.  Today AMD is launching the 5970, their dual-GPU card that finishes building out AMD’s technical domination of the high-end market. With it AMD delivers the absolute victory over NVIDIA’s GTX 295 that the Radeon 5870 couldn’t quite achieve and at the same time sets the new high water mark for single-card performance.
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Asus best, HP worst for notebook reliability.  A new study published by SquareTrade revealed that the smaller name brand notebook manufacturers are usually more reliable than their larger rivals. Of the top nine, ASUS has the lowest tracked breakdown rate with fewer than 10 percent of its notebooks failing in the past two years. Toshiba, Sony and Apple also have better-than-average performance and are either just over or under the same figure.
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One Terabyte SSD hits the shops.  OCZ has released a 3.5-inch SSD that packs a terabyte of data. Called Colossus, it is designed to boost desktop and workstation performance for people who need really fast storage drives and shift a hell of a lot of data. It is supposed to be about twice as fast as the Intel SSD drives with a read rate of up to 260 MBps, write of up to 260MBps and sustained write of up to 230MBps.
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IBM simulates a brain-like computer.  IBM's cognitive computing team claims to have achieved significant advances in large-scale cortical simulation and developed an innovative algorithm that synthesizes neurological data. It is the first near real-time cortical simulation of a brain that contains 1 billion spiking neurons and 10 trillion individual learning synapses. Whoa!
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Logitech G25 Racing Wheel review -  Best  Wow !
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Tech Scene & Miscellaneous News:.
Microsoft launches Azure cloud computing platform.  The launch strategically took place on the opening day of MS's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009 event in Los Angeles. The service will transition from its current "community technical preview" state to a feature-complete, final version on January 1, 2010.
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YouTube Direct: Users can yank videos from big media.  Google today announced YouTube Direct, an open source platform that lets media organizations directly connect with YouTube users to request and rebroadcast their YouTube clips. In these cases, the bigger media organizations would be looking to syndicate the users' content, and the user retains the right to pull the video whenever he feels like it. Google highlights the rise of citizen journalism as a major reason for the program.
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Pirate Bay closes down torrent tracker.  After months of legal controversy which were followed by months of uncertainty about the future of the service, the Pirate Bay's popular torrent tracker has been shut down for good. But it wasn't a court-ordered takedown or the result of regulatory shuffling, the old Pirate Bay torrent tracker simply became obsolete. As a result, the Pirate Bay is no longer running its old tracker, and has switched over to listing "magnet links".
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Early Black Friday deals lucrative as ever.  Retailers are looking to boost business, so no need to wait for Thanksgiving; deals can be found today with little scrounging.
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