Cubricon writes, "As expected, Microsoft has dropped their price on the Zune in response to Apple's recent iPod updates. Ars Technica has an article that discusses the Zune's use of Microsoft's prepaid 'points' system for songs. Will the masses notice the difference between an iPod and a Zune? Will they want the FM and wireless capabilities?" The Zune lists for $0.99 more than the comparable iPod and songs from the Zune Marketplace will cost just under $0.99.

Via VoodooExtreme, an article on Team Xbox covering a panel at X06 on the future of storytelling in games. Along with Mr. Jackson, industry veterans Peter Molyneux and Greg Zeschuck weigh in on this issue. The meat of the article is a video of the presentation, which is regrettably in .wmv format. The Escapist has some highlights of the conversation up in their news section. "'I've got to the stage now where I just end up catching something on DVD and I'm more excited about games coming out in the next 2-3 months than films,' said Peter Jackson, director of Lord of The Rings and founder of Wingnut Interactive, an offshoot of his movie studio. 'That created an awareness in me of the shift in entertainment options out there, and if I'm feeling that others are too.'"

uniquebydegrees writes, "InfoWorld is blogging about the (predictable) results of a Microsoft-sponsored antiphishing technology bakeoff. From the TechWatch blog: 'Microsoft's Phishing Filter (MPF) in IE 7 Beta 3 received the highest "composite score" at 172, followed closely by NetCraft's toolbar with a composite score of 168. But when you dig into the numbers, another story emerges... IE's MPF antiphishing toolbar doesn't top out any of the individual tests that make up the composite score... So how did MPF end up on top?... Microsoft didn't do the best job of spotting phish sites, but it did do the best job of blocking the ones it did spot, and blocking was what garnered the most points... Blocking a phishing Web site earned you twice as many points as just warning about it in this test, but is blocking really twice as effective as just warning users?'"

steve writes "A team of over 700 physicists at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator have observed the B-sub-s meson oscillating between matter and antimatter states at 3 trillion times a second. From the Fermilab press release: 'Immediately after the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago, equal amounts of matter and antimatter formed. Much of it quickly acted to annihilate the other, but for little-understood reasons, a bit more matter than antimatter survived, providing the universe with the planets, stars and galaxies visible today.' The Standard Model predicted the oscillation, and Fermilab has been working for 19 years to confirm it. The announcement is good press for Fermilab, which is pushing Congress to build a new 18-mile-long International Linear Collider."

digihome writes "IBM and Lenovo are recalling 168,500 ThinkPad notebook battery packs in the United States and another 357,000 worldwide, saying the Sony-made lithium-ion batteries can 'cause overheating, posing a fire hazard to consumers.'" The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has more details.

SeaDour writes, "China claims to have carried out a successful test of its experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor. But what exactly made this test 'successful' is not clear. From the article: 'Xinhua cited the scientists as saying that deuterium and tritium atoms had been fused together at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for nearly three seconds. The report did not specify whether the device... had succeeded at producing more energy than it consumed, the main obstacle to making fusion commercially viable.'" China is a participant in the 10-nation ITER project to build a fusion reactor in the south of France by 2015. The article quotes the research head of ITER as saying, "It was important for China to show that it is part of the club. Here are English language versions of the Chinese news release: announcement, background.

Eurogamer reports that Guitar Hero II is coming to 360 at some indeterminate time in the future. From the article: "'The tour will continue the rockin' gameplay Guitar Hero fans have come to enjoy, and will now include expanded Xbox 360 capabilities,' according to RedOctane president Kai Huang. Who sounds pretty hip. Well, I think that sells the console pretty much single-handedly. Sony: it's SO OVER. 'With Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 rock rhythm, lead, or bass guitar tracks with downloadable content and the new X-Plorer controller, designed specifically for the Xbox 360.' Woo! Yeah!" All I know is that the axe is killer.

1up is running a piece looking back at the ten years since the N64's launch. The start of Nintendo's slump, the N64 still managed to come out of the console wars with some great and lasting memories, like GoldenEye, Smash Bros., and Ocarina of Time. From the article: "Nintendo certainly gave players plenty of time to get all 120 stars. By the end of 1996, the N64 still had fewer than a dozen games, and even that anemic library was glutted with mediocrity like Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Cruis'n USA. Sure, there were gems like Mario Kart 64 and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and there was the stubborn optimism of Nintendo of America President Howard Lincoln (who insisted N64 games sold more than 250,000 per title), but industry commentators were starting to see through the emperor's clothes. Meanwhile, Sony was turning up the heat with massive blockbusters like Final Fantasy VII." The Press the Buttons blog has some additional commentary on Nintendo's first 'meh' console.

BoulderDad writes, "Richard Branson presented a mock-up of the new SpaceShipTwo in New York. From the article: 'Future passengers aboard Virgin Galactic spaceliners can look forward to cushioned reclining seats and lots of windows during suborbital flights aboard SpaceShipTwo, a concept interior of which was unveiled by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson Thursday.' The video is worth watching; the spaceport details are more concept than reality, but the depiction of the phases of space flight is very good."

Next Generation is reporting that Peter Moore has once again raised the concept of the 'Wii60', a gamer who has chosen to buy an Xbox 360 and a Wii, instead of ... that other guy's product. From the article: "In a canny piece of anti-Sony propaganda he said, 'Dual platform ownership of Xbox 360 and Wii could be as high as 40% depending on what territory we are talking about. The influence of the Wii-60 movement seems to be growing enormously.' ... But the mischievous Liverpudlian could not resist expressing some doubts about Nintendo's machine. 'The controller is innovative but it remains to be seen how innovative your shoulder will feel after an hour's play.'"

Kelvin D. writes, "Computer Associates has come up with a new angle to get consumers to buy its security software — a warranty with cash benefits if you catch a virus ($1,500) or get your identity stolen ($5,000). From the article: 'Users who want the identity theft coverage need to both install and register their copies of Warranty Corporation of America's Mobile Lifeline (included). No registration, no coverage.'" Moblie Lifeline includes something that sounds like a benign Trojan: it lets you retrieve or delete files from your stolen computer if it's ever connected again to the Internet.

smooth wombat writes, "Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had formed an organization dedicated to electing politicians 'who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy.' The group will be a 527 organization and will focus its efforts on races in which science plays a part." From the article: "In what it described as a Bill of Rights for scientists and engineers, the group said that researchers who receive federal funds should be free to discuss their work publicly, and that appointments to federal scientific advisory committees should be based on scientific qualifications, not political beliefs. It said the government should not support science education programs that 'include concepts that are derived from ideology,' an apparent reference to creationism and its ideological cousin, intelligent design."

Gamasutra sits down with Manifesto Games co-founder Greg Costikyan to discuss how the revolution is coming along. They explore the group's business model, the retail market, and the dangers of GameTap. From the article: "They don't worry me, particularly; I'm skeptical that their business model is sustainable. But basically, my argument is that they can afford to offer so large a number of titles for a $10/month fee largely because the major publishers view older games as worthless, since they cannot be sold through conventional retail any longer, so they're willing to accept a small share of rental revenue. But I also believe that PC games, in particular, are going to move online in a big way over the next few years and will eventually disappear from game stores — PC games are responsible for just 6% of their revenues, and take up a lot more shelf space than that justifies." Mr. Costikyan further explores this last concept in a post on his site called, simply, Why GameTap is Evil.

sunshineluv7 writes, "IT managers gathered in New York City earlier this week to get advice from experts on when, why, and how to virtualize their server environments. The takeaway from the conference: if you want to run an enterprise-class virtualization platform in production today, stick with VMware." Other wise words from this conference: "Virtualization is a journey, not a project."

Kozar_The_Malignant writes, "Electronic passport scanners have been installed at SFO. Ten of the scanners were received last week and have now been put in service. Various creative responses have been discussed here before."