ITEM:
This week, Microsoft gobbled up Skype for $8.5 billion. Microsoft swears that Skype will remain as a separate division, and really what reason would anybody have to not trust Microsoft? Given the Redmond company's big deal with Nokia, this moves their Windows Mobile 7 platform into a much better competitive position against apple's iOS and google' android with Skype's huge installed base now being able to use whatever bundled madness Microsoft dreams up.
[Source: Link]
ITEM:
Speaking of iOS, supercomputer expert Dr. Jack Dongarra has figured out that, using just one of the cores on an iPad 2, the machine is as powerful as the biggest, meanest Cray supercomputers in the world … if the year was 1985. Before you laugh, those where the ones Matthew Broderick hacked into in War games, that handled nuclear weapons. Now you can get that power at Best Buy. Welcome to the future, putas!
[Source: Link]
ITEM:
To follow up on our main event segment from last week, Sony's Playstation network could be down another month at least, Sony swears no financial data is at risk, the rogue members of hacking group Anonymous swear they'd never divulge what was pilfered and the real loser in this, of course, is the online players. Anecdotal reports have XBox 360 trades on the rise, which (now that Microsoft has skype) must make Bill Gates feel good about his gaming aspirations too.
NOTE: Look for numerous updates to this story in our next episode.
ITEM:
Swiss researchers in the city of Lausanne have been teaching robots how to evolve, and, as they predicted, the robots started to learn altruism, helping each other for no reward of their own. That's all well and good until I'm cursing out my laptop for being slow and the toaster jumps over to attack me, protecting its lover. Not cool, man!
[Source: Link]
ITEM:
Certain Android devices got Netflix this week, which doesn't have a more widespread release due to the seventy billion different versions of android on phones, tablets, kiosks, underwear and sandwiches. Lifehacker posted a guide to get it going on almost any Android device.
[Source: Link]
ITEM:
Finally, Nintendo has dropped the price of the popular Wii system to $150, the first serious and across the board price drop since 2006. Is a new system in the pipeline? Only the Koopas could know for sure.
[Source: Link]