Since ancient man painted his stories of mammoth slaying and female conquest on the cave walls, he has been looking for a more efficient interface of documentation and communication. In short, he needed a better OS than his dried fecal matter on sandstone could provide him.

Some will tell you that Windows Vista has been 5 years in the making. In light of recent forced analogy, the timeline should start at a more reasonable 7 million years. Hit the jump for the Frankenreview - the one review you need to read about Microsoft's new OS, because it's assembled from the important ramblings of MSNBC, CNET, PC World, PC Mag (photos), Electric News and Stuff Co. There's no filler, just good, old fashioned dinosaur proteins.

Brian was REALLY awesome to have on the show. I give Google a LOT of props for coming on a live show like mine where we take calls and also questions live from the chat room. I also did not provide any questions ahead of time to Brian. This may not seem like a big deal to most people reading this but I can tell you about 65% of the companies who wanted to come on my show later declined because I refused to do a pre-recorded show for them. I want to do live shows with live callers and questions. Anyway I just wanted to say that it was super cool Google came on for a live show.

During the show Brian talked about the goal of the recent changes and shed a lot of light on why they made the changes and other interesting aspects.

The first issue that was covered was AdSense and copyrighted content. Brian went into really good reasons as to why this is a new change. - The intenet is so users can not make money from AdSense off of other peoples content. (mp3's, images, term papers) Google is taking a more active approach then waiting for the DMCA to arrive.

This guide will cover prepping and painting of steel, aluminum, plastic, and acrylic plus more. I'm sure some people will think some of the steps are not necessary and quite extensive compared to some guides. Yes, this may be true but I am writing this guide to help get a quality finish from your case, not something that looks like the neighbor painted in his homemade cardboard paint booth with a 99 cent can of paint from the dollar store.

Before getting to the main parts I will sum up a few questions that are typically asked as well as general items will be needed. If there is any questions/something isn't every clear feel free to email me with questions. I tried to make everything as simple and quick as possible so there might be a few grey areas for some people.

In response to intense criticism over the 2000 race -- when a recount dispute focusing Florida's "hanging chads" and inscrutable ballots was resolved by the Supreme Court -- election supervisors in 15 counties spent millions on touch-screen technology, which itself has come under fire.

The machines allow voters to cast their ballot by touching their choices on a video screen. But they provide no paper backup, a safety feature that critics say would help guard against fraud and bolster voter confidence.

Crist told a group of newspaper editors he would ask the state legislature for $20 million to switch to machines with a paper backup.

Interactivity is a major buzzword in today's gaming world. Uncountable numbers of games for almost any platform you can think of claim to provide environments that can be shot up, ripped apart, climbed on, molded to the player's liking, and so forth. It's a great idea in theory, but in concept, I haven't played many that have really delivered. Most of this interactivity seems to be accomplished in cleverly scripted events; while I find many such moments enjoyable, I can only shoot so many more glass bottles and pass that off as "interactivity."

Enter Stranglehold, an upcoming action game that boasts the kind of crazy fight scenes you can only see in a John Woo film. How can it do this? Because it more or less is a John Woo film. With the critically acclaimed director's name on the title, Stranglehold aims to provide gamers with the type of fast-paced fight scenes that are normally available only in movies. How? Allegedly, with some of the most interactive environments ever seen in gaming.

So the question asked by gamers to titles such as Red Faction and Black remains: will this game really supply heretofore unparalleled interactivity, or will I yet again be forced to entertain myself by busting caps in innocent glass bottles? Brian Eddy, producer at Midway Games, hopes for the former.

Drivers created by the kernel developers at the request of hardware vendors will be included in the Linux kernel source tree so that they are included in mainstream Linux distributions and made available to end users. According to Kroah-Hartman, the offer is available for all sorts of hardware ranging "from USB toys to PCI video devices to high-speed networking cards."

In order to take advantage of this service, developers need only send specifications to the kernel development community and provide contact information for an engineer. The kernel developers are even willing to develop drivers without direct access to the hardware. Kroah-Hartman also states that the newly-formed Linux Foundation (previously Open Source Development Labs) will provide a legal framework for companies that require kernel developers to sign NDAs.

The statements (Dutch source) from these leading politicians basically say that piracy should be condoned, as long as Internet traffic is taxed. Although the (hypothetical) model might sound appealing to some, it is not very practical. First of all, illegal music downloads are just a small percentage of all files that are swapped illegally. What about movies and software, will those companies be compensated too? And an ever bigger problem, these politicians seem to assume that all internet traffic is generated by illegal downloads. What about sites like YouTube, or software, music and videos that are released for free? These all generate a lot of traffic, but have nothing to do with piracy.

A bad idea if you ask me. It is good to see that politicians are exploring alternative methods to overcome piracy, but this one is quite ridiculous. This clearly shows how alienated politicians sometimes are from the real (or virtual) world.

This is not the original car that David Hasselhoff drove around in and William Daniels provided the voice for, but it is a 1984 Pontiac Trans Am.



In some ways, that's a good thing. The KITT replica on eBay has a CD/MP3/DVD player installed, where the original probably only had a tape deck, if that.

The starting bid for the car is $19,000. That's much cheaper than other famous vehicles like the original Ecto 1 from Ghostbusters, or one of Steve McQueen's personal motorcycles.

The auction ends Wednesday and is only available to local bidders or those willing to pick up the car. The seller will not ship.

Overall, AMD continued its gain in the x86 processor market, said Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company had 25.3 percent of chip shipments in the fourth quarter of 2006, an increase from 23.3 percent from the year-earlier quarter and the highest number in its history.

Intel, based nearby in Santa Clara, Calif., dropped from 76.0 percent to 74.4 percent over the same period, McCarron said.

AMD's gains didn't mean a financial windfall, though. The company's average server chip prices dropped, contributing to AMD's financially difficult quarter. According to AMD, the company's server chip share was 22.2 percent for the quarter, up from 16.4 percent a year earlier but down from 23.6 percent in the third quarter despite price cuts.

WE'VE HEARD ALL MANNER of tinfoil hattery about Windows Vista's schemes for copy protection, which have prompted the usual round of threats from the usual quarters about how Vista will usher in an OS apocalypse and techies will migrate en masse to Linux. The more realistic types are mostly talking about simply staying camped out with Windows XP for the time being while eying the MacOS world with some curiosity. I'm not onboard with the more paranoid visions of the Vista future, but I do think the uneasiness about Microsoft's plans for Vista has some warrant.

Part of the problem is that Microsoft has, for some time now, been moving slowly but intentionally toward a new model for consumer operating systems sales–one more like the software licensing practices of the corporate world, where licensing is clearly understood by all parties to be "permission to use" rather than any kind of ownership. The distinction here may be a fine one in theory, but it is easily spotted in practice. In the past, the average Joe "owned" a copy of Windows much like one owned a paperback book or an album on CD. There was a physical medium attached to this "ownership," and one could more or less do as one pleased with the OS, within the bounds of fair use rules. This model of ownership may have largely been an illusion with relation to Windows and other software, but it was a powerful one. Functionally, it worked for the market. Consumers accepted it easily, and Microsoft did little to discourage it.

A San Antonio EB Games Clerk ws found dead in the store Monday afternoon, police there said. Managers found Amber Belken, 24, at the store about 2 p.m. after going by the store to see why she wasn't answering the phone. Police said a witness saw Belken enter the store alone around 9 a.m. and that they believe she was confronted by her killer as she prepared for the store's 10 a.m. opening.

If you choose to purchase an upgrade version of Windows Vista to upgrade XP, you will no longer be able to use that version of XP. Either on another system, or as a dual-boot option. The key will be invalidated, preventing activation.

For all of us who, sadly, don't have cable or for some other reason missed it, YouTube has Jon Stewart's interview with Bill Gates about today's release of Windows Vista. Is it just me or does Mr. Gates look like he's wearing a bullet-proof vest under his sweater?

Ok, so here's how this thing works. We'll compare XP and Vista on a feature-by-feature basis; we're not going to judge the merit of these features or whether they'll be more useful to you and your pals, nor are we going to get into the nitty gritty about what they do -- there are just too many -- but we will tell you whether or not we think there's anything better going on in Vista than there was before in XP. So...

* Green indicates something about this has improved
* Red indicates something sucks more than it did in XP.
* White indicates either nothing much has changed, or the features are roughly equivalent.
* Notes help out with a little background, where appropriate, and where available, recommend free software for XP that effectively augments the feature in question.

"The game that started it all is about to start again." So begins Aaron Cohen, producer of Electronic Arts upcoming update to the granddaddy of all MMOs, Ultima Online. The venerable brand has been around for ten years and in that time it's seen seven new expansions but not a single true sequel. Next spring Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn will change all that...sort of.

Though KIngdom Reborn represents EA's most significant investment in Ultima Online since the title's original launch, the new update isn't so much a new instance of Ultima Online as it is a comprehensive upgrade of the existing service's graphics and interface with a more newbie friendly experience. The new update will be offered for free to all the existing players of the game as part of the regular monthly subscription fee. To help entice new and former players into the world, EA will also be offering a 14-day free trial when the update is ready.

Given that a significant slice of the multi-hundred-million-dollar business took place on eBay until now, the move portends a significant shift in who controls the market for eBay has confirmed that it will ban auctions for the sale of property from online games and virtual worlds--except Second Life.

Because eBay has dominated the auction market for real-money trades, there's little question that the winner in this latest circumstance, at least in the short term, will be third-party sites like Internet Gaming Entertainment.

eBay on Monday confirmed its decision to ban auctions for the characters, currency, weapons, attire and accounts of online games such as World of Warcraft, City of Heroes and others. The move was first reported on Slashdot.

Is Apple's iPhone deal with Cingular a handicap to both parties? You almost get that impression hearing to Verizon executives tell it.

On a conference call following Verizon's fourth quarter earnings, analysts were quick to ask Dennis F. Strigl, Verizon chief operating officer, about the iPhone. After all, a USA Today report detailed how Verizon turned Apple down due to Steve Jobs' terms.

The biggest item in the USA Today report was that the Apple and Cingular deal is exclusive for five years. For what it's worth-that's a long time for the iPhone to be tethered to a network that can be spotty at times. In Cingular's case, Apple most likely gets most of the ROI. Cingular is clearly hoping to grab subscribers.

Two months ago, I wrote a list of 10 Classic Features to "Bring Back' to OS X. But Classic MacOS isn't the only operating system OS X could stand to swipe a few features from. Some of us Mac users also use Windows, either occasionally or full-time at work, and there are a handful of features from that operating system I think Apple should implement in Mac OS X. Here are my Top Nine (not ranked in order of importance):

Lightroom will be sold for $299 (not coincidentally the same price as Aperture), and you can preorder it now. Those looking for a deal can get it at an introductory price of $199 until April 30, and a free trial will also be available for download as of the 19th. People who've already built libraries around the the beta will be relieved to know that it doesn't expire until February 28 and existing libraries will be updated for use by the 1.0 app.

On the heels of Intel announcing breakthroughs in transistor design, Taiwan-based motherboard makers indicated that Intel should be able to increase its technology lead over AMD, and in order not to further endanger its market position, AMD should look to develop innovative solutions instead of competing head to head with Intel.

In the first quarter 2007, Intel plans to increase the production ratio of its 65 nanometer (nm) products to 80% and minimize 90nm products such as the Pentium D 800 series to less than 5%. In the second quarter, Intel is due to phase out its Pentium 4 600 series processors, and the ratio of 65nm products will increase to 90%.

On the other hand, AMD has only recently started to implement a 65nm process on its Athlon 64 X2 processor lineup and the company will not release 65nm-based Athlon 64 or Sempron CPUs until later this year, noted the motherboard makers.