More than two dozen people, including a professional baseball scout and a high-stakes poker player, were charged Wednesday in connection with a billion-dollar-a-year gambling ring that rivaled casino sports books.

The illegal betting scheme was orchestrated through a Web site called Playwithal.com, run by the poker player, James Giordano, 52, of Pine Crest, Fla., according to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. A break in the case came last year when investigators secretly hacked into a laptop computer that Giordano had left in a Long Island hotel while attending a wedding, police said. He was arrested early Wednesday by FBI agents who had to scale the walls of his fortess-like Florida compound.

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Source: AP

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Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) on Wednesday said it will invite gamers to test the online multiplayer features in its long-awaited "Halo 3" video game in spring 2007. The "Halo 3" test will be available to Xbox 360 consoles and accessed via Microsoft's Xbox Live online game service. Microsoft said it will take feedback from testers and use it to put finishing touches on the third installment of its blockbuster game series.

Microsoft and "Halo" maker Bungie Studios said they also will offer new downloadable "Halo 2" content for the Xbox 360 in spring 2007. Sony Corp.'s  PlayStation 3 -- a rival to the Xbox 360 -- makes its U.S. debut on Friday. Nintendo Co. Ltd. (7974.OS) will unveil its new Wii console on Sunday.

Source: Reuters

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This tool will help to remove specific, prevalent malicious software from infected systems. Because computers can appear to function normally when infected, Microsoft advises you to run this tool even if your computer seems to be fine. In addition to using this tool, you should use an up-to-date antivirus product to help protect your computer from other malicious software.

Source: BetaNews 

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All Zune colors were present, brown, white (or off-white) and black. The brown design was by far my favorite color of the three.

I had expected the player to be fairly heavy, but after holding the Zune in my hand it was clear that I was wrong. It is not as light as the latest video iPod, but compared to my fourth-generation iPod, the Zune was lighter. The top of the Zune had a clear glass layer while the exterior had a tactile feel to it, nothing like the hard metal and plastic of the iPod devices. The ‘skin’ of the Zune was a ‘rubberized’ material that had a smooth seductive feel to it. I found myself unable to stop stroking the device, so much that the demo assistant asked me to put it down.

Source: 2old2play 

 More Reviews: Gizmodo

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Donna Murphy is no fan of the ubiquitous iPod music player so on Tuesday she became one of the first to buy Microsoft's  new rival Zune device. 

"I just needed a new MP3 player to play my music and watch videos," said Murphy, who bought a Zune at Best Buy's midtown Manhattan store. "I'm not an Apple fan, not an iPod fan. So I wanted to try something different."

Microsoft on Tuesday hit store shelves with Zune, touted in the media as the most likely candidate yet to challenge Apple Computer Inc.'s market-dominating iPod.

The world's largest software maker hopes to capitalize on consumers who may have wearied of the iPod, which has sold nearly 70 million devices and commands about 75 percent of the portable music player market. But initial shopper interest suggested the Zune media player -- heavily promoted in gadget reviews and television talk shows -- was in for a slow building process.

An employee at the Best Buy store said two shoppers entered the place as it opened and purchased Zune players, and that about 20 were sold within the first three hours. Customers touched and tapped Zune players on display, asking employees about the differences between Zune and iPod.

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Originally scheduled to launch next year, the new Xeon 5300 and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 should make an immediate dent in servers and in high-end workstation/enthusiast PCs. In those markets, users can take advantage of software that's already been written to exploit four separate processing threads.

Most major manufacturers plan to use Intel's chips in their latest products. Dell jumped the gun last week with the announcement of new quad-core systems, including new servers and workstations. Word broke of IBM's proposed quad-core offerings last Thursday. And Hewlett-Packard is expected to follow suit on Tuesday with its own servers and workstations featuring the new Xeon chips.

Source:  ZDnet

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Computer giant Sun Microsystems says it will offer programming language Java to the open source community.

Java is used in more than 3.8 billion mobile phones, computers and other devices around the world.  The decision to release the code under an open licence means the world can now use, develop and share Java for free.  The same type of licence also covers the distribution of the core, or kernel, of the open source operating system Linux.

Source:  BBC

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Sony said Tuesday its new video game console, the PlayStation 3, does not run some PlayStation and PlayStation 2 software titles properly, the latest problem the electronics maker has encountered in its cash cow game business.

Sound is eliminated on some software titles when played on the PS3, while some other titles do not play on the latest machine at all.

The PS3, launched in Japan on Saturday, is supposed be compatible with game software designed for its previous models.

Satoshi Fukuoka, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment, said the game unit of Sony is checking the compatibility of the PS3 with some 8,000 game titles launched in Japan for the PS and PS2, but declined to give the number of games found incompatible so far. 

The Sankei Shimbun daily said on Tuesday about 200 PS and PS2 titles are likely to have compatibility problems.

Fukuoka said Sony plans to solve the problems by online upgrading of system software for the PS3.

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Google Inc. introduced on Monday the first upgrade to its business software line, offering organizations a way to give individual employees or group members a personalized home page. The new personalized home page feature for organizations functions as a central access point for Google Apps -- short for applications -- a set of Web-based business software aimed at small business users, which Google introduced in August. The Google Apps start page is a stripped-down version of the central overview that office workers see in Outlook from Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) or Lotus Notes from IBM (NYSE:IBM - news). All three offer links to e-mail, calendar and other features.

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Minor Bugfix Release

• Have fixed Captcha on Comment items so we will be trialing this for a while. Anonymous/Non-members can now comment.
• Hitting 'Enter' on main page after entering login details now logs you in.
• Fixed some HTML Validation Errors and a few CSS Errors

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