Daily News Brief: AMD Takes Page from 3DFX

AMD Plans Dual-GPU Cores

In retrospect to 3DFX's Voodoo 5 series, AMD's upcoming R680 based videocards will sport two GPU cores, each built on the 55nm process. The recently released RV670 was the first GPU to be built on a 55nm process, leading to speculation that the RV680 could be two RV670s on a single board. AMD wouldn't confirm this, but did say their new GPUs should launch next month.

Next Jackass Moving Coming to Internet

Johnny Knoxville and company never seem to run out of stunts, and the newest one includes bypassing movie theaters altogether in favor of the internet. Jackass 2.5, a joint venture between Viacom owned Paramount Pictures and MTV Networks, will pipe through broadband connections December 19. Not to worry if you prefer to watch movies in your living room rather than on the PC, you'll be able to rent the new movie from Blockbuster free of charge between Dec. 19 through 31.

$85,000 Internet Phone Bill

Piotr Staniaszek was shocked to receive an $85,000 phone bill from Bell Canada. How'd it get so high? Piotr's son thought his Bell Mobility unlimited browser plan meant he could hook up his phone as a modem for his PC, only to unwittingly rack up the enormous charges. Bell reduced the bill to $3,400 in the spirit of "goodwill", but Staniaskzek senior still plans to fight the bill.

Flickr Goes Open Source

Take that, proprietary software! Flickr's upload tool turned 3.0 today, and the new version also turned open source. With the source code now being offered, programmers can (and probably will) modify Flickr's Uploadr tool so that it works with other sites. Other changes to 3.0 include the ability to set photo order in sets adding new photos to the upload queue.

Fairy Tales Auction Net $4 Million

J.K. Rowling, author of the popular Harry Series novels, apparently has the Midas touch. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, one of only seven copies of Rowling's handwritten and illustrated fairy tale collections, was expected to sell for $100,000, but instead fetched a cool $4 million from buyer Amazon.com. The money will go to the charity 'The Children's voice.' And what will become of the book? Amazon plans to tour it through libraries and schools.