Wii Game Powered by What You Search on Google

The Wii is a great console for playing party games like Wii Sports and Think Fast. Soon Japanese gamers will be playing a new kind of game with the Wii, one that involves the popularity of certain Google search terms.
Siliconera reports that the quiz-like game, dubbed 'And Kensaku,' pulls 10,000 search terms using data from Google. Players then have to guess which terms are more popular in a variety of different games. In one game, whoever picks the phrase with the least amount of hits loses. In another, it's a race

Intel Not Going to Wait for Software to Catch Up

Just this year alone (and we've only cleared three months of it), Intel has unleashed an entirely new generation of desktop and mobile mainstream processors, as well as bumped up its enthusiast desktop offering to a hexacore, 12 thread Gulftown CPU. Earlier this week Intel bumped the core count for Nehalem-EX server chips to eight with the ability to process 16 threads.
With this rapid pace of rollout, is there any worry that Intel's hardware performance growth is outpacing the speed of software progression? Intel says it's not worried at all. In fact, it prefers staying ahead of the software demand curve.
"We learned our lesson in waiting for software. We did this 64-bit thing that was perceived to be a little bit late relative to the market. So we will get the hardware out there as soon as it's ready," Kirk Skaugen of Intel's Architecture Group said at the Nehalem-EX launch, according to the Register.
"What drives things mainstream," Skaugen said, "is this 'software spiral' that's been talked about since the early days of Andy Grove. The fact that when we announce new hardware, it creates a software set of innovations that put more pressure on the hardware to create new hardware innovations - and the cycle goes on and on."

Isohunt Ordered to Take Down Illegal Torrents

With the Pirate Bay beaten down (but not sunk), a ruling by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles now opens fire on sharing sites such as Isohunt, Torrentbox and Podtropolis.
Unless there is some change in decision, Isohunt will likely have to shutter its doors to the 30 million unique monthly visitors that it gets.
The judge is demanding that Isohunt stop "creating, maintaining or providing access to browsable website categories of dot-torrent or similar files using or based on infringement-related terms."
Gary Fung, the 27-year-old Canadian who runs Isohunt, said that such a rule basically bans keyword searches. "Filtering against keywords. It amounts to nothing less than taking down our search engine," Fung said in a telephone interview with Wired.
Fung says that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires Hollywood to provide links to files to be removed. Banning keyword searches, however, could erroneously remove content that doesn't infringe on copyright.
"We’re discussing the mechanics, the process that is reasonable for an injunction," Fung said. "We’re still trying to hope that the judge will do the right thing."

To Make Windows 7 Safer: Remove Admin Rights

Windows 7 is the safest and most secure desktop operating system from Microsoft yet, but it's still not impervious to attacks. But according to IT solutions firm BeyondTrust, 90-percent of critical Windows 7 vulnerabilities can be mitigated by the removal of administrator rights from Windows users
Key findings from this report show that removing administrator rights will better protect companies against the exploitation of:

• 90-percent of critical Windows 7 vulnerabilities reported to date
• 100-percent of Microsoft Office vulnerabilities reported in 2009
• 94-percent of Internet Explorer and 100 percent of Internet Explorer 8 vulnerabilities reported in 2009
• 64-percent of all Microsoft vulnerabilities reported in 2009

The findings aren't earth shattering by any imagination. Even Microsoft shares this best practice advice in the "Mitigating Factors" portion of Microsoft’s security bulletins: "Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights."
While most readers of Tom's Hardware may prefer to operate in their Windows 7 environment with admin rights, those in charge of computers for a group or enterprise should without a doubt configure user accounts without administrative rights.
Read more about the report at Ars Technica.

Crysis 2 to Have 'Best Graphics You've Ever Seen'

PC gamers know well how astonishing the graphics were from the original Crysis, even by today's standards years after release. Now with Crytek working on a sequel that's spread out to consoles, the developer hasn't changed its goal of providing the best visuals possible – even on consoles based on technology from five years ago.
In an interview with PSM3, as relayed by CVG, Crytek executive producer Nathan Camarillo said that the graphics for Crysis 2 will be 'the best you've ever seen' even when running on a relatively outdated GPU as the Nvidia RSX in the PlayStation 3.We know [developing for PS3] is a big challenge, but we're happy to accept it," said Camarillo. "The most important thing that Crysis taught us as a developer is that, while cinematic graphics and convincing gameplay will get you a lot of press and build strong interest before release - you shouldn't count on that exclusively."

"We're aiming to set the graphical benchmark," he continued. "Why would anyone not want to play a game with the best graphics they have ever seen, great gameplay, some engaging fiction, challenging AI, killer weaponry and a complete gaming experience like no other?"
While CryEngine 3 makes it easy for the Crysis 2 developers to port their work easily between platforms, there's no doubt that those wanting the experiences that best match the pictures below will need to be playing on PC.