Sales rose 18% to $15.84 billion, beating analysts’ forecasts of $15.65 billion.

Looking ahead, Microsoft said fiscal-first quarter revenue would come in between $14.7 billion and $14.9 billion. Analysts were hoping for $15.06 billion.

The company’s XP operating system was upgraded in early 2007. But users have been slow to adopt the new Vista system.

“The Vista upgrade cycle is not providing the same growth that previous upgrade cycles have helped them,” said Richard Williams, senior software analyst at Cross Research.

Chris Liddell, chief financial officer of Microsoft, admitted tough economic headwinds in the months ahead. “Looking forward, despite difficult economic conditions, we will build upon the momentum exiting fiscal year 2008,” he said in a written statement.

But fears of a slowing economy are expected to pinch technology spending. “Economic weakness is hurting them,” said Williams.

Another analyst says that overall, Microsoft has actually been holding up well. “These results were really pretty solid,” said Peter Misek, global technology strategist for Canaccord Adams. “They have not seen this broad malaise that has hit Wall Street.”

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The agreement announced Monday comes before the Aug. 1 shareholders vote.

Under the agreement, eight members of the current board will seek re-election. Icahn will be appointed to the board, and two other seats will be filled based on a list of nine candidates recommended by Icahn.

Icahn had wanted to replace Yahoo Inc.’s directors with his own hand-picked slate to negotiate a sale of all or part of Yahoo.

These days even Indiana Jones might think twice about packing his trusty trowel and theodolite for some fieldwork in southern Afghanistan. But guerrillas and foreign armies are no obstacle for archaeologists who are using Google Earth to identify hundreds of new sites. They have also drawn up plans of more than 45 known but previously unmapped sites.

Until recently, satellite images have been too expensive and variable for widespread use by archaeologists. Now Google Earth’s freely available high-resolution images are helping David Thomas and colleagues at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, to forge ahead with a project called Archaeological Sites of Afghanistan in Google Earth, which catalogues details of 463 potential sites in the Registan desert. These include mounds called tepes - the remains of ancient mud cities - hand-dug underground water channels and villages.

Thomas has also produced basic plans of sites such as the Qal’a-i Hauz fortress, believed to be a winter dwelling of the Ghaznavid elite of the 11th and 12th centuries. The images show evidence of structures which may have been hides used to hunt gazelle, and raised features probably used to manage water supplies.

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The original iPhone, introduced in late June 2007 in the United States only, sold about 270,000 units in its first two days. Sales topped one million by early September. The new device is sold in 21 countries.

“IPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, said in a statement.

Steven Hodges, president for the Northeast region for AT&T, Apple’s only carrier in the United States, would not disclose how many iPhones it had sold, but he said the iPhone would be AT&T’s key device for the holiday shopping season this year.

Activation problems marred the phone’s introduction Friday in the United States, with many buyers leaving stores frustrated that they could not use it after waiting in line for hours.

AT&T blamed problems in synchronizing the phone with Apple’s iTunes online music and software store, saying they were probably caused by too many people trying to gain access to iTunes at the same time.

“We don’t yet know the breakdown of how many phones were sold to new customers and how many existing iPhone customers upgraded, but regardless, sales during the first weekend were very impressive,” said Jeffrey Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst.

Still, iPhone sales pale compared with those of established mobile phone makers, like Nokia, which sells almost 10 million phones a week, or the Samsung Electronics Company or LG Electronics, which each ship more than 100 million a year.

 Source

I’ve also bowled and played pool. I’ve listened to some really cool tunes and watched a surprisingly lame standup routine by Ricky Gervais. I met a nice young lady and took her out to dinner. I bought some new clothes and got my car washed.

I haven’t murdered any prostitutes or engaged in any graphic sex acts. (Although, for the record, there’s a very brief, non-interactive S&M scene right at the beginning of the game — which almost serves as a warning that this isn’t “Pokemon.”) And the violence has been relatively tame: Certainly, the number of bodies dropped per hour is less than in the last two Oscar-winning best pictures, “No Country for Old Men” and “The Departed.”

Still, protests are inevitable, because any game that puts the player in the shoes of a criminal is bound to be seen as perverse. It’s hard to argue with critics who find the “Grand Theft Auto” games immoral, because the developers at Rockstar Games seem to revel in their nihilism. I’ve attacked Rockstar in the past for such cynical, ultraviolent games as “Manhunt 2,” but I’d never argue that they don’t have the right to publish them.

Just so we’re clear, “Grand Theft Auto IV” is not for the kids. It’s rated “M” for mature, so people under 17 shouldn’t be able to buy it. It has lots of blood, some nudity and a nearly constant stream of filthy language. And it’s very entertaining.

It’s the story of Niko Bellic, an Eastern European who’s just arrived in America. As soon as he lands in Liberty City (which looks an awful lot like New York), he’s greeted by his cousin Roman, who’s been in America for 10 years. Roman has lured Niko with promises of glamour and riches, but all he really has to offer is a dilapidated apartment and a crummy job at a car service.

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Nearly all seem to be somewhere other than the United States, although I’d happily be pointed to examples I’ve missed. I have a story in this week’s Science Times on Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City — a 2.3-square-mile complex that by 2016 should, if plans hold, house nearly 50,000 people working on next-generation energy technologies. No cars. Solar cells for electricity and solar-thermal arrays for the energy needed for air conditioning. Local agriculture. Waste fully recycled.

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But the article accompanying the awards lays out several reasons why iPhone is very important in computer industry. The relentless buzz around the world, as well as the sales figures, are signs that people really think about what they want in a mobile computer. The iPhone has made wireless industry sit up and realize that it is setting a stage in the future in which mobile computer gradually occupies a larger part of your world. iPhone isn’t just cellphone, it’s also a Platform! Apple engineers use OS X, a full featured operating system, suited in that elegant glass and stainless steel case.

Indeed, iPhone is one little thing you shouldn’t miss!

Diamondville will be focused on the low cost mobile PCs such as the Eee PC by AsusTech Computer, the XO laptop from One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and Intel’s Classmate PCs. These laptops are designed for children and for economiies requiring long-lasting and durable batteries and dust proof casings.

In order to maintain the high quality of mobile computing even at a low cost price, Diamondville is designed as an all new architecture, with a new RTL (register transfer language) and a new silicon.

The new microprocessor will be of lower voltage than the ULV (ultra-low voltage) Core 2 Duo processor, said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of the mobile platforms group at Intel. Intel launched two versions of ULV Core 2 Duo in April, each with the thermal design power of 10 watts.

These laptop PCs in this user category will probably cost between US$199 and $250, he said. For that reason, Diamondville will also be extremely low cost.

On Tuesday, an Asustek executive said his company has already received an order for 1 million Eee PCs from a government he declined to name. The OLPC group has also confirmed orders from several countries.

Trouble sometimes seems to appear out of thin air, and a new experiment suggests that’s exactly what may happen to the world’s biggest science project when it’s scheduled to begin operation in Switzerland next May. In the high-energy maelstrom of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), particles will spontaneously appear out of the empty vacuum, which might just cause the $4-billion accelerator to overheat—and shut down.The idea that pairs of particles (in this case, an electron and a positron) can emerge out of nothingness is well known. But physicists working on a competing extreme machine, New York’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, recently observed the heating effect for the first time. As they slammed together gold ions in a 2.4-mile loop guided by a magnetic field, reaching temperatures of over a trillion degrees, pairs of electrons and positrons were created out of the vacuum. But when some of these electrons latched on to passing gold ions, they diverted part of the beam, causing it to smash into the wall of the loop. The result: a “hot spot” of 0.0002 watts, roughly equivalent to the power output of a firefly.

That’s no big deal for the RHIC—but the LHC will be using heavier lead atoms, speeding along with nearly 100 times more energy, which is expected to make electron-positron creation 100,000 times more likely. As a result, the heat generated will be more like 25 watts, or a low-watt bulb. Given that the superconducting magnets that steer the beam are cooled to a brisk 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-456 degrees Fahrenheit), the extra heat could cause a risky sudden shutdown, followed by lengthy downtime for the accelerator.

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ELECTRONIC SPY FLY

As U.S. Military pouring considerable amount of money into MAV (micro air vehicle) projects, it’s likely that these robotic bugs will be used as spy flies. DARPA envisions this can be used by soldiers in their reconnaissance missions as they can be remotely controlled from the ground. This spy flies would not only relay images of troop movements, guidance to enemy targets, but it could also be used to detect weapons of mass destruction may it be biological, chemical or nuclear.

In the recent development, scientists from Harvard successfully invented a robotic fly which can be used in reconnaissance missions, search missions, and in many other military intelligence gathering activities . The researchers, headed by Professor Robert Wood, took seven years to complete the development with the backing of US Military.