If you live in the US, this week kicks off the beginning of the holiday season with Thanksgiving on Thursday and the inevitable day-after-Thanksgiving sales that happen on Friday (we hesitate to call it "Black Friday" this year, since it seems that everyone will probably still be in the red). As usual, Mac fans will be able to get discounts on machines and gadgets this week, not only through Apple, but Best Buy as well.

As per its yearly tradition, Apple announced this morning that it plans to offer discounts during a "one-day shopping event" on November 27. The Apple Store Online, as well as retail stores, will likely offer discounts on Macs, iPods, and other Apple-y accessories, but the details won't be available until Friday rolls around. Last year's deals ran along the same lines as previous years, with the company offering between 5 and 10 percent off various products—for example, customers in 2008 got $101 off certain MacBooks and iMacs, $21 off Apple TVs, and $11 off the iPod touch. Maybe this year, analysts won't hype themselves up so much over the as-yet-unannounced discounts, too.

Aeonite writes "The third book in a pseudo-trilogy, Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG offers advice from 21 experts in the field of video game writing, pulled from the ranks of the IGDA's Game Writers Special Interest Group and wrangled together by editor Wendy Despain. It follows in the footsteps of Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing and Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, and in keeping with the trend offers the most specific, targeted advice for how to write for an assortment of game genres." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.

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So you spent $70 on the Apple Magic Mouse and then you realized it would only work with your Mac. Never fear! Apple last month posted Bluetooth Update 1.0 for Windows, which improves the performance of the Apple Bluetooth devices when running Windows XP and Windows Vista on a Mac computer using Boot Camp. Inside are the goods you need: Magic Mouse drivers for Windows even if you aren't using Boot Camp.

It seems that a recent survey of global broadband practices by Harvard's Berkman Center at the behest of the FCC has stirred the telecommunications hornets nest. Both AT&T and Verizon are up in arms about some of the conclusions (except the ones that suggest offering large direct public subsidies). "Harvard'sBerkman Centerstudy of global broadband practices, produced at the FCC's request, is an 'embarrassingly slanted econometric analysis that violates professional statistical standards and is insufficiently reliable to provide meaningful guidance,' declares AT&T. The study does does nothing but promote the lead author's 'own extreme views,' warns a response from Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, it 'should not be relied upon by the FCC in formulating a National Broadband Plan,' concludes the United States Telecom Association. Reviewing the slew of criticisms, Berkman's blog wryly notes that the report seems to have been 'a mini stimulus act for telecommunications lawyers and consultants.'"

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The second malicious worm to attack jailbroken iPhones has been spotted in the wild, and is the first to directly target users' bank accounts. Called iBotnet.A by security research firm Intego, the worm tries to steal account logins from customers of popular online banking service ING Direct. Though it only affects iPhones that have been jailbroken by the user with SSH installed, this is clearly a trend that is growing quickly—and one that Apple isn't likely to care about until it affects "legit" users.

According to Intego, the malware scans for phones on a local network and a range of IPs with an open SSH port, then attempts to log in using the default root password that is the same on all iPhones. This is the same method used by the first malicious iPhone worm that came out earlier this month. The IPs scanned by this particular worm include those in the Netherlands, Portugal, Hungary, and Australia.

With the launch of Bing in June 2009, Microsoft's search engine is being scrutinized a lot more than it has in its past incarnations. For example, we noted that at launch, Bing was blocking search queries pertaining to sexual content in about 20 percent of the regions it was officially supporting. Also at launch, The New York Times wrote about how Bing was censoring results in Chinese-language queries, even if they are conducted outside of China. On November 20, 2009, The New York Times posted an opinion article titled "Boycott Microsoft Bing" that said little has changed over the last five months:

eldavojohn writes "Eufloria is a strategy game made by independent game company Dyson. I bought it on the Steam service this weekend for $20 and was impressed that it is a visually and aurally pleasing game. It's a real-time strategy game, but isn't a rehashed Civilization or Age of Empires — it employs a different kind of mechanic to conquer. Like a lot of games that rely on novel game mechanics (Braid & Spore come to mind), part of the game's experience relies on you learning as you progress through the 25 or so levels. They will definitely push you to utilize different strategies and tactics, so don't read this review if you're already planning to play this game, as it'll most likely be filled with spoilers about developing a strategy. I give the game an average 6 out of 10 and would like to say that with titles like Braid and Eufloria out there, 'independent' no longer equates to 'sucks.'" Read on for the rest of his thoughts.

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When we first started posting news tidbits regarding Windows 8, we warned readers not to expect the operating system to arrive until 2011 at the earliest, and we noted that 2012 was more likely. After the problems caused by the long gap between the releases of Windows XP and Windows Vista, Microsoft said that starting with Windows 7, the company would work really hard to follow a three-year release cycle. Windows 7 was released on October 22, 2009, so it makes sense that Windows 8 will get here in 2012, assuming no delays. That might be a slightly harder feat to achieve given that Windows 8 will be a major release (like Windows Vista was, as opposed to a minor one, like Windows 7 was) but since Windows 7 arrived less than three years after Vista, Microsoft should be able to pull it off.

blee37 writes "This is a side-by-side comparison of the Apple and Microsoft multi-touch mice. It includes video demonstrations of using the mice in applications, first-person shooters and 3D manipulation. It also has new photos of the internals of all the mice."

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There are few worse feelings than getting ready to play a new game and finding your wireless controllers are filled with dead batteries. This is a problem easily avoided by making sure your junk drawer is filled with spares, but wouldn't it be great to not have to worry about it at all? Energizer has a solution for your battery woes, and its charging technology is the ultimate in convenience: you simply place your Wiimote down on the pad and walk away. But does it work?

Inductive charging moves electricity through a magnetic field, and allows batteries and other devices to be charged without any exposed metallic contacts or wires. The Energizer Wii Remote Flat Panel Induction Charger slams a bunch of expensive-sounding words together for the name, but it's actually quite simple—you simply put the battery packs into your Wiimote, plug the flat panel into a wall socket, and then you put your Wii Remote onto the panel whenever you'd like to charge your controller. A red light turns on to show the charger has a connection and turns green whenever the charge is completed.

theodp writes "In May, the USPTO rejected Amazon.com's patent claims (PDF) for its Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communications Network (a 1-Click spin-off). At the time, a USPTO Examiner cited Bilski, explaining that elements of CEO Jeff Bezos' gift-delivery invention 'may be performed largely within the human mind,' coming to essentially the same conclusion a NY Post reporter arrived at in 2002. But Amazon's attorneys have worked their legal wordsmithing magic (PDF), convincing the USPTO that 'obtaining delivery information for a gift from one or more information sources other than the gift giver and recipient' is indeed novel and patentable. A Notice of Allowance for the patent was mailed to Amazon on November 17th, just in time for Holiday Season injunction-giving!"

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destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine 'Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction,' but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. 'In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me: "I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about."' And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. 'Gol' dang! It's news to me!'"

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How important is it for readers of game reviews to understand the conditions under which a review was written? Would it change things if you knew all the early reviews of a game were written based on play time given in one location, under a managed schedule? What if the publisher paid for airfare and hotel rooms for the press? If you read an early review of a certain AAA game, chances are the circumstances behind the review weren't mentioned, but they may change how you perceive the review.

The title was Modern Warfare 2, and Activision paid for both the airfare and the hotel rooms to get publications to cover the game. If you wanted early coverage, this was the only way to get it. Joystiq added an addendum to its review, expressing its issues with the practice, pointing out the event was organized and paid for by Activision. "As this was Joystiq's only opportunity to review the game in advance of its release, we willingly deviated from our standard policy of not accepting accommodations and used the room," the site explained in its disclaimer. "We did so because we felt that participating in this event best served the interest of our readers."

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Coming hot on the heels of Microsoft's censoring of Chinese search results, browser-maker Opera has become the latest company to joyfully contribute to prosperous growth of the Great Firewall of China. For speed and convenience, the mobile phone-based 'Opera Mini' browser receives formatted web pages via Opera's own line of proxy servers. These unfiltered proxies gave Opera's Chinese users rare unfettered access to the wider web. However, this loophole has now been closed, with Chinese users now being directed to 'upgrade' to 'Opera Mini China,' which closes this loophole, returning them to the bosom of party censorship, and Opera to the favor of the Chinese Government. Truly; 'To Get Rich Is Glorious.'"

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Hugh Pickens writes "The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is in discussions to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, to 'de-index' its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search, and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet. Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content. 'This is all about Microsoft hurting Google's margins,' said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan. 'It's easy to believe that [Microsoft] may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google,' writes Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing. 'Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either; he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.'"

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The Open Magazine is a new current affairs/entertainment weekly magazine available on magazine stands in India. The magazine was launched in the first quarter of 2009.

The publisher of Open Magazine, Open Media Pvt. Ltd. wanted a web presence for its magazine. It selected Srijan Technologies, a content management specialist company based out of New Delhi, India to construct the website. Srijan's responsibility was to build the website from scratch and host it. Site design was done by Itu Chaudhuri Design.

Srijan Technologies used Drupal 6. Development took place over a period of approximately 4 months and the Open website was released to the public in July 2009.

Currently the website shows all the content that appears in the print version of the magazine online for free. The website also contains some exclusive web content that is not present in the print version. The website is substantially updated once a week though web exclusive content is updated more frequently to keep the site "fresh."

The purpose of this case study is to introduce all significant (mostly technical) aspects of the website from Srijan's perspective. Feedback and comments are requested.

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It was a report that went right to the roots of United States broadband policy, so it should come as no surprise that it's getting hammered by the telecommunications industry.

Harvard's Berkman Center study of global broadband practices, produced at the FCC's request, is an "embarrassingly slanted econometric analysis that violates professional statistical standards and is insufficiently reliable to provide meaningful guidance," declares AT&T. The study does does nothing but promote the lead author's "own extreme views," warns a response from Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, it "should not be relied upon by the FCC in formulating a National Broadband Plan," concludes the United States Telecom Association.

bennyboy64 contributes this excerpt from CRN Australia: "The CSIRO will this week launch a new supercomputer which uses a cluster of GPUs [pictures] to gain a processing capacity that competes with supercomputers over twice its size. The supercomputer is one of the world's first to combine traditional CPUs with the more powerful GPUs. It features 100 Intel Xeon CPU chips and 50 Tesla GPU chips, connected to an 80 Terabyte Hitachi Data Systems network attached storage unit. CSIRO science applications have already seen 10-100x speedups on NVIDIA GPUs."

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