An anonymous reader writes "Following on the news that Microsoft was going straight to a RC for Windows 7, the One Microsoft Way blog has put together some dates on the upcoming roadmap for Vista's successor. Microsoft has always said 'three years after the general availability of Windows Vista,' which was released on January 30, 2007, and that the release date was also dependent on quality. Internally though, Microsoft is saying other things. It looks like we'll see the RC coming in April, and a final RTM version before October 3. Yes, that means Redmond is currently hoping to get Windows 7 out the door in 2009."

As we approach the holiday season, Nintendo has already said that they don't expect to keep up with demand for the Wii console. In an interview with the LA Times, Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime said they're ramping up production by 33% already, with further increases planned. They're hoping to avoid the scarcity of Wii's that occurred last year, which cost them a great deal of money in potential sales. "We're now producing 2.4 million units a month worldwide. Last year, we made 1.6 million a month. So we've made a 33% increase. One of our competitors projects they will sell 10 million consoles worldwide this year. For us, that's three months of production. We're producing an unprecedented level of hardware to try to meet demand."

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to EE Times, a California-based company called QuantumSphere has developed nanoparticles that could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. The company says its reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings can boost the efficiency of electrolysis (the technique that generates hydrogen from water) to 85% today, exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10%. The company says its process could be improved to reach an efficiency of 96% in a few years. The most interesting part of the story is that the existing gas stations would not need to be modified to distribute hydrogen. With these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving."

The author of ATSC capture and edit tool has announced that he is attempting to revoke the licensing of his product under the GPL General Public License. Unfortunately it appears that the GPL does not allow this particular action. Of course in this heyday of lawyers and trigger happy litigators who can tell. What successes have others had in trying to take something they once operated under the GPL and make it private? And the more pressing question, why?

Lucas123 writes "While the news may fall under the 'Duh' category, it's still relatively shocking how quickly the death knell for HD DVD player sales came on after Warner Bros. announced they were dropping dual hi-def DVD format support in order to back only Blu-ray. According to a Computerworld story, the week after Warner's announcement, sales of HD DVD players dropped to 1,758, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc players, up from 15,257 the previous week."