From the other side of the world comes a report that Windows Vista Service Pack 2 will be released to manufacturing in April 2009, roughly a year after SP1. The Malaysian website TechARP has a pretty good track record with this sort of prediction, and my sources tell me that schedule sounds about right.

An anonymous reader writes "Now that Intel has unleashed its next-generation Core i7 processors, all eyes are turned to AMD and its incoming wave of 45nm CPUs. To get a feel for AMD's future competitiveness, The Tech Report has taken a pair of 2.7GHz 45nm Opterons (with 75W power envelopes) and put them through the paces against Intel Xeons and older, 65nm Opterons in an extensive suite of performance and power efficiency tests — from Cinema 4D and SPECjbb to computational fluid dynamics and a custom XML handling benchmark.

PC World - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Intel are teaming up to produce solid-state drives for servers and workstations, the companies said Tuesday.

AP - Detroit's automakers, making a second bid for $25 billion in funding, are presenting Congress with plans Tuesday to restructure their ailing companies and provide assurances that the funding will help them survive and thrive.

AP - Environmentalists and electricity producers square off Tuesday at the Supreme Court over the use of billions of gallons of water to cool power plants and whether enough is being done to protect fish and aquatic organisms.

The market share of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer dropped under the 70% mark last month for the first time since Web metrics vendor Net Applications Inc. started keeping tabs on browsers, the company said today.

IE slipped to a 69.8% share, down from October's 71.3% and off 7.6 percentage points in the past year.

Time.com - For the first time in a decade, researchers say cancer rates are falling in the U.S. - at the same time that cancer death rates are also on the decline

AP - The Israeli military says hundreds of Israeli settlers rioted in the predominantly Palestinian city of Hebron in reaction to a court ruling.

In this game (free games to play) you play Tic Tac Toe with another player. The play area is a grid of 3 x 3 spaces. The ...

You are trapped in a room full of bad guys. You need to shoot your way out. The moment they stick ...

In action movies, when the hero has only minutes before the readout on the bomb counts down to zero, with many miles to drive (driving games) through a congested city in order to get there in time, he'll just ignore traffic lights and floor it. Wouldn't it be great if you could do the same thing on the Internet if your torrents don't download fast enough? Now you can. Maybe.

Reuters - The U.S. state of Georgia votes in a run-off election for U.S. Senate on Tuesday that will help decide whether Democrats gain a big enough majority in the chamber to ram through legislation virtually at will.

PC World - A wave of coordinated terrorist attacks across Mumbai late Wednesday dominated the news this week, with bloggers and people using Twitter helping to get information to families and friends of those affected. Multinational technology companies are not expected to change their business strategies as a consequence of the stunning attacks, which targeted westerners.

Ponca City, We love you writes "A study has confirmed that many people see human facial features in the front ends of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars. Forty study participants assessed cars based on a system known as geometric morphometrics by viewing high-resolution, 3D computer reconstructions and printed images of 38 actual 2004-06 car (driving games) models and rating each model on 19 traits such as dominance, maturity, gender, and friendliness, and if they liked the car (driving games).

PC World - online (free-games-online) attacks will be dominated by smarter malware and bots targeting Web users ranging from gamers and social network users to the elderly and unsuspecting parents.

AP - Helicopters evacuated ferry passengers traveling from Finland to Stockholm in the Baltic Sea early Tuesday after a fire broke out in the engine room, rescue officials said.

PC World - Cell phones distract car (driving games) drivers more than talkative passengers, and hands-free devices don’t make for safer driving, according to a recent Reuters report on a new study published by the Journal of Experimential Psychology: Applied. Even worse, drivers who use mobile phones are as impaired as those who are legally drunk.