Daily News Brief: Nintendo to Offer Wii Rain Checks

Workaround for Wii Shortage

It's not an ideal solution, but for those bumming about the holiday shortage of Nintendo Wii consoles, Nintendo announced a 'rain check' program exclusive to GameStop. To qualify for the rain check, shoppers must pay the full price of $249 for the console on December 20 or 21, and in exchange will receive a certificate promising a Wii "sometime in January." No word on exactly how many Wiis will be available, but a GameStop exec noted they had "many tens of thousands" of rain checks.

AMD Talks 45nm and 32nm

It's been a rocky year for AMD, and Phenom has provided anything but a storybook ending to 2007. We covered the L3 cache bug last week, but if there's one thing AMD can bank on, it's that today's tech quickly becomes tomorrow's old news. Executive VP Mario Rivas says 45nm is well on the way, with samples expected next month along with ramped up production of the high-k dielectric chips in the first half of '08. Mario also said they've started the initial steps towards 32nm parts.

Congress Claming Down on Copyright Infringement

Perhaps Jammie Thomas' fine of $222,000 for illegally sharing music over the internet wasn't stiff enough, because now Congress has introduced a new bill that would increase civil penalties and criminal enforcement even further for copyright infringement. The 69-page Prioritizing Resources and Organization of Intellectual Property Act (PRO IP Act) allows for "multiple awards of statutory damages", seizure of computer or network hardware, and creates a new agency (White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, or WHIPER) that will cost tax payers at least $25 million per year.

Watch Out Wikipedia

Because here comes Google. Udi Manber, Google's VP of engineering, announced that Google is testing a publishing platform called Knol. Knol looks to rival Wikipedia, and like its established competition, authors can create topics on Knol and interlink articles and content. But unlike Wikipedia, Knol will put a major focus on the author, and it doesn't look like users will be able to edit content without the author's permission.

Microsoft Responds to Opera Antitrust Claims

Opera filed an antitrust complaint with the EU against Microsoft yesterday, claiming that MS abuses its dominant market position by bundling IE with Windows OSes. They further accused MS of hindering interoperability by not adhering to Web standards, an area Opera has been known to excel at. Microsoft representatives fired back today, stating PC users are free to choose and make default whatever browser they want, Opera or otherwise. Opera has asked the EU to force MS to unbundle IE from Windows.

Vista on Asus Eee PC?

You betcha, though it's no easy task. Getting the resource hungry OS to run on the 900MHz Celeron based notebook required some crafty workarounds by Paul O'Brien, who pared down the installation routine and was aided by an 8GB SD card. Read more and see the OS/Eee PC combo in action here.