Tuesday Morning Tech News

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Intel and Microsoft back HD DVD. Format wars are GREAT for customers. And you think movie sales were bad this year? Nice job.

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There are several reasons the two companies went with HD DVD, said Richard Doherty, Microsoft's program manager for media entertainment convergence. Among them: HD DVD requires that movies may be copied to a consumer's hard drive, making it easier for people to send movies around home networks; HD DVD supports regular DVD recordings on the flip side of the disc, letting people sell hybrid discs to consumers who have DVD players today but fear their discs will be obsolete; and HD DVD offers more capacity.

DRM for everyone! Computers are turning against us. When the day comes that we can't make our computer do something we want, we're done for... ohh wait...

Google's index is bigger. I think this quote sums up News.com's excellent indepth reporting...

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In a random test, using the search terms "Joe Schmoe" and "pickles," Google returned 451 results, Yahoo returned 62 results, MSN returned 60 results and Ask Jeeves returned 54 results.

Wow, thanks for the highly scientific study. I now know Google is greater than all by at least 7 times!

Magnetar cracks under quake.

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But the magnetar's exterior crust is not so pliable. The crust is made mostly of iron. The magnetic field passes through it in places, which isn't a problem for normal neutron stars. But in magnetars, the field interacts with the core and shifts around erratically, causing crustal stress. Eventually, the stress reaches the point where the crust cracks.