The Guardian has an article about id Software's status after being purchased by ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) not long ago. While id gained considerable financial stability out of the deal, it's clear that what Bethesda has to gain is access to top-of-the-line engine technology, which they've often needed to license. id's Todd Hollenshead said, "The videogames business is defined by technology, which is why guys like JC [John Carmack] are still so significant. Consumers may not be as in touch with the intricacies as they used to be, but you can still make significant, impactful change. We're confident Rage will be one of them..." He also mentions that "the PC market has receded in terms of significance," a sentiment evidenced by id's aggressive expansion into the iPhone games market.

1sockchuck writes "Yahoo has come up with a data center design called the Yahoo Computing Coop, which it says will make its new data center in Lockport, NY one of the most efficient on earth. The design features 120-foot by 60-foot metal prefabricated facilities with louvers on the side to support free cooling, and a peaked roof to manage the release of waste heat from the hot aisle. Chief Yahoo David Filo said the name was adopted 'because it looks like something chickens live in.' The $150 million data center in Western New York, which was announced earlier today, will run on cheap hydro power from the Niagara River."

snydeq writes "Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP a year ago today, no longer selling new copies in most venues. Yet according to a report from InfoWorld, various downgrade paths to XP are keeping the operating system very much alive, particularly among businesses. In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs. Microsoft recently planned to further limit the ability to downgrade to XP now that Windows 7 is in the pipeline, but backlash against the licensing scheme prompted the company to change course, extending downgrade rights on new PCs from April 2010 to April 2011."

MojoKid writes "Today marks the official launch of Intel's new Core i7 processor, the most major overhaul of Intel's core processor architecture since the release of their Core 2 design. As has been reported, the Core i7 is a major departure from Intel's aging Front Side Bus architecture of old, now replaced by Intel's QPI (Quick Path Interconnect) serial links. This 20 lane bi-directional (40 lanes total) point-to-point connection provides 6.4 GT/s of bandwidth and scalability for future multi-socket designs as well. In addition, the Core i7 now has an integrated triple channel memory controller offering over 3X the bandwidth of the previous Core 2 architecture with DDR3 system memory. Though the product is set to ship in volume later this month, the early benchmark numbers show Intel's new chip is markedly faster clock-for-clock versus their previous generation CPU and much faster than anything AMD has out currently."