Depending on the personality you choose--"Wild Wendy" or "Frigid Farrah" for instance--Roxxxy may purr a metallic, "That gets me hot!" after you introduce a topic like soccer.

Another possible detraction--some of her voices sound more like Stephen Hawking's vocal synthesizer than that of a hot human female.

Roxxxy may be just a stiff chatterbox for now. But who knows what a few actuators and makeup would do?

As you may or may not know, Windows 7 allows two display drivers to be used at once - like in Windows XP. Therefore, it is possible to use an Nvidia card for PhysX and ATI card for graphics rendering. Sadly, since the release of 186 graphics drivers, Nvidia has decided to block this feature anytime a Non-Nvidia GPU is present in the system.

As expected, this move by Nvidia generated a lot of criticism from both consumers and even Nvidia's competitors. Luckily, a forum member by the name of GenL has released an experimental beta patch which intercepts disable-PhysX-if-Radeon-is-present-code.

The newest iPhone 3.1 update intentionally removed tethering functionality from all phones operating in networks that are not Apple partners. This is not limited to hacked or jailbroken phones, but also includes expensive "officially supported" factory unlocked phones. To make the problem worse Apple has made it impossible to downgrade back to working 3.0 version for iPhone 3GS phones.

Apple's Sept. 9 rollout of an iPod Nano equipped with a video camera and a larger screen suggests a larger trend of manufacturers concentrating on multifunctional devices, including tablet PCs.

Of course, by this point, Apple had also released the iPhone, which allows its users to make calls in addition to listen to music, play games and perform other functions.

If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off.

Using a flaw they've found in the iPhone's handling of text messages, the researchers say they'll demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone's functions.

And unlike the earlier exploits, Apple has inexplicably left them unpatched, Miller says. "I've given them more time to patch this than I've ever given a company to patch a bug," he says.

Western Digital has unveiled what it claims is the world's first one terabyte 2.5-inch hard disk drive.

However, within the same breath WD announced their own new external portable storage device - My Passport Essential SE portable USB drive - which incorporates the HDD.

Seagate is still playing catch-up in this space, offering currently a 640GB 2.5-inch HDD at 300GB per platter.

According to manufacturers, CD-Rs should last for decades. Some even quoted an upper limit of 120 years based on accelerated aging tests! That sure is a long time, isn't it? But will CD-Rs really last that long?

Of the corrupted CD-Rs, many of them only had a few files corrupted, but two of the CD-Rs were completely unreadable. Neither one of the two CD/DVD drives we used could even recognize the CD-Rs, much less read anything off them.

It should be pretty obvious by now - CD-Rs don't last forever. Although manufacturers may quote lifespans of decades in length, they are unlikely to last more than a few years. Our simple test showed that even when stored properly, CD-Rs that were just 7-9 years old were failing at a significant rate.

Apple has admitted that its latest iPhone 3GS model can overheat but has blamed the problem on sunshine rather than a glitch with its design.

Apple says that users should not leave their phones in a car where temperatures can exceed the -20C to 45C range that the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS models were designed to function in.

iPhone 3GS users on Mac forums complain, however, that the handset becomes hot when it is not being used in a car.

After discovering attack code on a brand new Windows XP netbook, antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs warned users yesterday that they should scan virgin systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet.

"This was done at the factory," said Schouwenberg. "It was completely brand new, still in its packaging."

Among the three pieces of malware was a variant of the AutoRun worm, which spreads via infected USB flash drives.

Lyse has become the largest fiber-to-the-home provider in Norway thanks to an innovative business model that asks customers to preregister before any fiber is dug, then offers them a $400 savings if they dig their own trench from the street to the home.

Lyse's Altibox service offers 10Mbps, 30Mbps, or 50Mbps connections-all of them fully symmetrical (upload and download speeds are identical).

As for the future, Lyse can ramp up the speed dramatically once all that precious fiber is in the ground; its partners are already testing both 100Mbps and 1,000Mbps connections.