11/19 - Kahuna notes:  Kahunette has conferences this week and yesterday she was out at school all day, finally getting home about 8:15pm. Herbal stopped by to eat dinner with me. We cooked up some beef tenderloin steaks. Yeah baby! Today Kahunette is coming home for dinner, but has to return to school for a couple more evening conferences. The weather is gloomy with temps in the 40s and rain falling every now and then. Onward . . .
.°
Gaming Scene News:.
Assassin's Creed 2 review -  9.4/10  Wow !
.
RAGE preview.
.
Q&A - Assassin's Creed II.
.
BioShock 2 pics.
.
Shattered Horizon review -  78%  Hmmm...
.
The Sims 3 v1.7.9 patch.  (18mb)
.
Hardware Scene News:.
ATi Radeon HD 5970 Graphics Card review -  Tops  Wow !
.
IE9 to support hardware-accelerated rendering.  MS is focusing on speedy graphics rendering for its next version of Internet Explorer. MS says, IE 9 will take advantage of a computer's graphics hardware to better render online images, videos, animations and other graphics.
.
Google phone far from a sure thing.  Web headlines are hyping the so-called Google Phone (a Google-branded, Google-sold Android) so much you might think it's as good as on store shelves. According to this report, Google may very well have something like this in the works. It strikes many in the tech industry as unlikely - but hey, anything's possible. The point, however, is that contrary to what many reports are implying, the "Google Phone" has not been confirmed by Google.
.
US PS3 sales soar 70% in October.  After years of third-stringing it, Sony's beleaguered PS3 may finally be rallying, and the online PlayStation storefront snagged record revenues, with downloads up 60% over the same period last year. Whoa!
.
Apple machines are less reliable.  A report by Squaretrade looked at records on more than 30,000 individual laptops in terms of reliability and found that despite being more expensive, Apple machines are actually less reliable than cheaper machines made by Asus, Toshiba and Sony. To the chagrin of Mac fan boys, the figures show that, despite the hype and high cost, what Apple sells is nothing more than an average PC. Ouch!
.
Western Digital WD TV HD Live review -  8/10  Hmmm...
.
Tech Scene & Miscellaneous News:.
National Security Agency beefed Win 7 defenses.  Apparently, the National Security Agency helped MS harden Win7 against attacks and is providing similar assistance to Apple, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat too. The admission came in prepared remarks delivered Tuesday by Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, at a hearing before the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
.
Microsoft touts groundbreaking 'clip-on' for Active Directory.  MS will pass out beta code Wednesday it hopes will define the next evolution of directories. It's a modular add-on that is built on a database and designed to add querying capabilities and performance never before possible in a directory.
.
Judge bitch slaps AT&T, rules Verizon ads okay.  AT&T got its day in court to complain about, what it termed, Verizon's "misleading" 3G Map ads. Judge Timothy Batten denied AT&T's request for a temporary restraining order to stop the advertisements. The full case has yet to be heard, but AT&T's opening move earned them severe bitch slapping and a kick in the ass.
.
Microsoft PDC 2009 news.  WinInfo has some reporting up on whatz happening over at PDC 2009. Check it.
.