Microsoft's new Windows antivirus package will furnish XP, Vista and 7 users free protection from viruses, spyware and other malware, starting in the second half of 2009. While it'll replace Microsoft's current paid service, we don't suggest throwing away any third-party solutions just yet.

To help make Photoshop more flexible and bit easier to work with, Adobe releases Configurator — an add-on that makes it easy to customize Photoshop panels to suit your needs. The real power of Configurator lies in the ability to swap your creations and download tools from other Photoshop users.

A compound similar to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, improves memory in rats in low doses, and could help stave off Alzheimer's disease.

The Nissan Cube, a 30-plus-mpg minimobile, looks like a marshmallow, and will bring Japan's love of small cars to the United States.

Witnesses in the so-called MySpace suicide trial include Ron and Tina Meier, the parents of the 13-year-old girl who committed suicide, and Ashley Grills, a former employee of Lori Drew's who helped set up the phony MySpace account that was allegedly used to harass Meier up to the day of her death.

Location-based social network Shizzow has launched in the tech-friendly Bay Area, following months of private beta testing in Portland. Like the location granddaddy Dodgeball, Shizzow focuses on connecting people in real life. Now you can easily let friends know which coffee shop's WiFi your laptop is soaking up today.

A set of long-lost photographs of microscopic images, among the first ever taken, has resurfaced at a museum in San Francisco. These beautiful microphotographs mark a turning point in 19th-century science from idealized illustrations to real images of individual specimens.

The Nokia N82 is still the best phonecam on the market. Fine optics and a good image-editing suite pal around with GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and a music player to make this one well-rounded rig.

1981: Citing their socially destructive effects, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos bans videogames in his country. Filipinos are given two weeks to hand over or destroy their game consoles.

Marcos was no stranger to imposing draconian solutions. The Philippines lived under martial law throughout the 1970s, Marcos' way of dealing with the increasingly radical elements — a restive university population and a resurgent Communist movement, mainly — that grew in opposition to his corrupt regime.

In this case, though, he was responding to pressure from parents and educators, who claimed that games such as Space Invaders and Asteroids were a "destructive social enemy, the electrical bandit" that was weakening the moral fiber of the young and turning them into a generation of obsessives.

While ample evidence exists — including testimonials from game players themselves — to support the argument that excessive videogaming can be both highly addictive and behavior altering, it's probably safe to characterize Marcos' reaction as a tad heavy-handed. It was not without its supporters, however, nor was the Philippines the only country to impose restrictions on videogames. Marcos' outright ban on all videogames, though, was unique at the time, at least in the so-called free world.

Just this year, Afghanistan's Islamic government proposed an absolute ban on videogames, while also considering the outlawing of dog- and bird-fighting, and billiards.

In the West, the violent content that is the central feature of so many games continues to prompt various restrictions. In the United States, for example, individual states have imposed sales restrictions on games deemed too violent or sexually explicit for younger gamers.

The videogame industry has been encouraged to be self-policing, and a ratings system exists, similar to what the movie industry uses. But enforcement is difficult, and the industry's policing efforts — in the face of such enormous profitability — have been half-hearted at best.

Source: Various

.streamHead {font-size:1em;font-weight:bold; color:#393939;background-color:#fff;padding:16px;margin:0px; border-top-width:1px;border-top-color:#a3d2f6;border-top-style:solid; border-right-width:6px;border-right-color:#a3d2f6;border-right-style:solid; } .headLabel{color:#757575} .streamElem {clear:both;padding:6px 16px;margin:0px;background-color:#EFEFEF; border-top-width:1px;border-top-color:#a3d2f6;border-top-style:solid; border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#a3d2f6;border-bottom-style:solid; border-left-width:6px;border-left-color:#a3d2f6;border-left-style:solid;} .streamBit1 {float:left;margin:6px 0px 6px 6px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal; list-style-type:none;} /*border-top-width:2px;border-top-color:#000;border-top-style:dashed;*/ .streamBit2 {font-size:0.9em;font-weight:bold;} /*border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#000;border-bottom-style:none;*/ .streamIcon {font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold; } Datastream: Normal Blood Composition Per Microliter

Platelets: 200,000 - 500,000 >>>

White Blood Cells: 5,000 - 10,000 >>>

Lymphocytes: 1,000 - 4,000 >>>

Segmented Neutrophils: 2,500 - 6,000 >>>

Band Neutrophils: 0 - 500 >>>

Juvenile Neutrophils: 0 - 100 >>>

Eosinophils: 50-300 >>>

Basophils: 0 - 100 >>>

Monocytes: 200 - 800 >>>

Datastream: Decibel Levels

Rustling Leaves: 15 dB >>>

Ticking Watch: 20 dB >>>

Babbling Brook: 50 dB >>>

Vacuum Cleaner: 70 dB >>>

Noisy Factory: 85 dB >>>

Thunder: 120 dB >>>

Artillery Fire: 140 dB >>>

Saturn Rocket: 194 dB >>>

Datastream: Ph of Common Acids (concentration of 0.1 normality)

Boric: 5.3 >>>

Acetic: 2.9 >>>

Lactic: 2.4 >>>

Formic: 2.3 >>>

Citric: 2.1 >>>

Sulfuric: 1.2 >>>

Hydrochloric: 1.0 >>>

Nitric: 1.0 >>>

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Unless you're a deeply geeky watch aficionado, a frequent patron of Barney's or a protesting student during the French labor strikes of the mid-1970s, then you've probably never heard of Lip. Time to get educated. Thirty-five years ago the European watch manufacturer pioneered some of the geekiest tech and most innovative design ever found in a timepiece. But all was not to be well for Lip. A volatile political and labor climate in France shattered the 141-year-old company and led to it being closed for nearly 15 years.

After numerous false starts, Lip was jump-started back to existence in the 1990s. Since then the watchmaker has enjoyed a quiet resurgence by returning to its nerdy roots and hiring back many of the original designers of these timepieces. These reissued watches are both technically and physically identical to their DeGaulle-era counterparts. Here are a few of our favorites.

Left: Originally conceived in 1973 by Roger Tallon, designer of the TGV high-speed train, the Lip 200 "Dark Master" set the design standard that all Lip watches would follow for the next 30 years.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Another watch invented by Roger Tallon in 1975, the Lip Diode featured one of the first digital displays ever found on a timepiece.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

A fairly radical departure from conventional design, the Baschmakoff Jump Hour was the 1972 brainchild of Prince Francois Baschmakoff, an illustrator and package designer hired by Lip. The jump hour displays concentric discs, and thin oblong cases have trickled into the design departments of many other watchmakers including Nixon, Diesel and Fossil.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Sure looks like it came straight outta the '70s, doesn't it? Wrong! The Lip Mythic is a new timepiece released in 2008. Don't worry though — it was inspired partially from another watch Tallon designed in 1972.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Also dreamt up by Tallon, the Fridge watch is designed to echo appliances (specifically refrigerators and iceboxes) that he grew up with in the 1930s.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Despite an ominous moniker, the Lip Mach 2000 "Mafia" was designed in 1973 as a more svelte counterpart to the Dark Master.

With two supercomputers reaching petaflop-per-second speeds, and a crop of other petascale rigs in the making, science will get a major boost.

With two supercomputers reaching petaflop-per-second speeds, and a crop of other petascale rigs in the making, science will get a major boost.

A supposedly fan-made YouTube clip shows a two-wheeled tribute to the rockin' videogame, set to the tune of a 1999 punk song.

Facebook's new application vetting program is designed to help you decide which Facebook apps to trust — but the program bears a striking resemblance to basic, mob-style extortion schemes and might leave you wondering why it's necessary.

Threat Level's David Kravets will be on justin.tv at 11 a.m. PST Wednesday discussing the Recording Industry Association of America's five-year litigation campaign. Kravets will discuss the conflicting judicial rulings about what level of proof is required for the RIAA to prevail in a file sharing case to alerting readers that damages are as high as $150,000 per copyrighted music track.

This isn't your typical survivor horror videogame. These tips will keep you the blood bath going just a little bit longer.

Things didn't go quite according to plan for astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper during her spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday.

The 222,000-student Tennessee public university system is bracing for layoffs and class reductions as part of a $43.7 billion budget shortfall, but Tennessee lawmakers have approved a $9.5 million measure requiring university internet filtering to prevent the sharing of copyrighted music and other works. The Recording Industry Association of America hailed the nation's first-of-its-kind measure.

Solid out of the box, the latest World of Warcraft expansion adds hours of glitch-free new content to the expansive fantasy world.