Videogames may be nothing more than evening diversions to most Americans, but the industry as a whole is a multi-billion dollar heavyweight. Microsoft broke ground in the business when the Xbox launched in 2001, and came back swinging last year with the Xbox 360. The war for the seventh generation of game consoles has barely begun, and it's hard to know the score without a scorecard. We can get a good look at the odds, though, thanks to the reporting of Dean Takahashi. The author of the definitive book on the original Microsoft console, Opening the Xbox, offers the complete story of their next-gen offering in the recently published The Xbox 360 Uncloaked. A sometimes exhausting read that could have been more concisely edited, Uncloaked still highlights the human side of a complicated technical and business endeavor. Read on for my impressions of Takahashi's new look behind the curtains at Microsoft.

The winner of the contest is Alex Bendiken. He will receive a new laptop as well as bragging rights as the creator of the new look of Slashdot. You can see his winning design in a near complete form now. Feel free to comment on any compatibility issues. We plan to take this live in the next few days. There will undoubtedly be a few minor glitches, but please submit bug reports and we'll sort it out as fast as possible. Also congratulations to Peter Lada, our runner up. He gets $250 credit at ThinkGeek. Thanks to everyone who participated- it was a lot of fun.

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Airbus plans computerized systems that could automatically maneuver jetliners to avoid midair collisions, without pilot input, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'For the first time, flight crews of Airbus planes will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases to escape an impending crash with another airborne aircraft. Currently, all commercial pilots are required to instantly disconnect the autopilot when they get an alert of such an emergency, and manually put their plane into a climb or descent to avoid the other aircraft. The change, which hasn't been announced yet, comes after lengthy internal Airbus debates and despite skepticism from pilot groups and even some aircraft-equipment suppliers.'"

gevmage writes "CNN reports that a new version of Blade Runner will be released by Warner Home Video in a few months, for the 25th anniversary of the original film's release." From the article: "After a limited theatrical release, the newly spruced-up "Runner" will be released in a multidisc special edition DVD that also will include the original theatrical cut, the expanded international theatrical cut and the 1992 director's cut. Warner said specifics about the two DVD editions will be announced later."

Zoxed writes "The Tech Report have a comprehensive review of Seagate's Barracuda-7200.10 'perpendicular' drive, including a primer on the technology. They ran performance tests against 10 other drives, checking the noise and power consumption levels. The Seagate fared pretty well, even on cost (per Gigabyte)." From the article: "Perpendicular recording does wonders for storage capacity, and thanks to denser platters, it can also improve drive performance. Couple those benefits with support for 300 MB/s Serial ATA transfer rates, Native Command Queuing, and up to 16 MB of cache, and the Barracuda 7200.10 starts to look pretty appealing. Throw in an industry-leading five year warranty and a cost per gigabyte that's competitive with 500 GB drives, and you may quickly find yourself scrambling to justify a need for 750 GB of storage capacity."