Over the last several weeks, but especially with the last round of Patch Tuesday updates, we've been noticing a severely downward trend in Microsoft's Internet Explorer performance -- a trend we were able to confirm in our most recent tests. It seems that with each security update, IE8's performance was cut in half.

This morning, Microsoft issued what its engineers describe (though without using the term directly) as a bug fix for one of last Tuesday's updates: a patch that addresses two newly discovered issues. One of those issues is a type mismatch error that would appear to become a potential security threat. If it's not a threat yet, then it could at least partly explain some of the severe performance issues we'd been seeing in recent days -- or at least so we thought.

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Early this morning, Sony Ericsson took the wraps off of its first Android-based handset, the 1 GHz Snapdragon-powered Xperia X10. With a huge 4" touchscreen, an 8.1 megapixel camera and the elegant custom user interface named "Rachael," Sony Ericsson moves the Android platform a step further by giving it almost no mention in announcements and commercials.

Sony Ericsson mentions the Android Market, and notes in the spec sheet that the operating system is Android Donut 1.6, but otherwise it does not ride the point, and strives to make the device stand out as a distinct product.

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When the Verizon Droid from Motorola arrives next month, it will include a new version of the Android Operating system. Android 2.0, also known as "Eclair," will no doubt show up in lots of other new smartphones over the coming months.

Android 2.0 ushers in a host of new features. Perhaps the one that sparks the most interest is its native support for Microsoft Exchange.

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The death of Usenet has been proclaimed for well over a decade now, but the use of some derivative of the Internet's NNTP protocol for the trafficking of messages -- some of which are actually parts of legitimate conversations -- continues today. In fact, it probably can't really be stopped since, as is the case with a P2P network, no one really owns Usenet.

Since 2001, the Web's portal to Usenet has been Google Groups, the successor to the Deja.com archiving system. Google's plans to make something of Google Groups stretch as far back as 2004, with promises to make the experience more personalized and exciting. For the most part, Google Groups provides organizations with an expense-free system for broadcasting memberships to select groups on an opt-in basis.

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Here in the US, excitement has been high over Verizon's first Android handset, the Motorola Droid; so high, in fact, that it has actually begun to make an appreciable dent in iPhone favoritism.

This is partially due to the fact that a large number of iPhone users were Verizon customers before they got the iPhone, and still consider Verizon's wireless network to be superior to AT&T's. Verizon's "There's a map for that" advertising campaign has also added to the company's reputation for having a more robust network than AT&T.

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Over the last 10 days, Microsoft has opened two retail stores, in Arizona and California, and a café in France. Bloggers and journalists largely dismissed the retail outlets as Apple Store knock-offs, which is surprising considering reports of 1,000 or more people lined up for the second opening in Mission Viejo, Calif. That said, the numbers aren't confirmed and a free music concert likely bolstered them.

Over the weekend, ifoAppleStore chronicled the Mission Viejo-store opening -- albeit with some pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft commentary -- and large gallery of photos. From the text and pics, Microsoft Store similarities to Apple Store are obvious.

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Clearwire and Sprint have been working hard to complete the planned WiMAX network deployment for 2009, and with the addition of a handful of new major markets this week, the project has nearly fulfilled its promises for the year.

Today, Sprint announced it has launched WiMAX services in the North Carolina cities Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point and Cary; in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; and in Chicago, Illinois.

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In what may become the most wide-ranging insider stock trading scheme to be uncovered this decade, evidence uncovered last month by the US Securities and Exchange Commission led to the indictment last week of IBM Senior Vice President Robert Moffat, believed to have been the next-in-line for the CEO post. Moffat was indicted on October 16, arrested on criminal insider trading charges, and has posted $2 million bail, according to reports.

Now, the latest name to become linked to the alleged scheme has submitted his resignation, effective next January, and will take a leave of absence in the interim. Dr. Hector Ruiz was chairman of GlobalFoundries, the manufacturing entity spun off from AMD, which Ruiz led as its chairman and CEO during the dawn of the multicore era.

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Say it with me, everyone: Facebook sucks.

I don't mean that in a literal sense, of course. But the growing number of obviously hacked status updates and phishing-like scams coming from folks we all thought were our friends has me wondering if Facebook is having more than a little trouble keeping a lid on the kinds of nasties that have already ruined e-mail, Usenet, and while we're at it, the Web in general.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently voted to move forward on a rule-making process that could lead to new government regulations for the Internet. That is what the FCC and some activist groups want, although they claim to be supporting only "neutrality." Even key players seem confused.

The Open Internet Coalition (OIC) says neutrality "is about keeping the hands of several powerful network operators -- AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast -- off the Internet, preventing them from taking steps to change the basic open nature of the Net that has led to its success."

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Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2.

We added the TestCube 3D battery earlier this month in deference to a number of Betanews readers who pointed out that we weren't paying enough attention to the browser's capability to plot and work geometry simultaneously. This test remains Opera's forte, especially on XP where Opera 10 Beta 1's numbers are better than double those of Google Chrome. There's something here about parallelism between rendering and math that Opera still gets and the others don't.

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Our physical test platform, and why it doesn't matter

The physical test platform we've chosen for CRPI browser testing is a triple-boot system, which enables us to boot different Windows platforms from the same large hard drive. Our platforms are Windows XP Professional SP3, Windows Vista Ultimate SP2, and Windows 7 RTM.

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Let's face facts: The real reason you'd ever want a search engine to locate "similar images" to one or more you're observing at the moment, is because you're not certain of what you're looking for or what you want to find. A search for photographs that look like da Vinci's Mona Lisa is going to turn up more pictures of the same Mona Lisa. And while a search for photos that look like Paris Hilton will turn up more photos of Paris Hilton, a search for photos that look like other one-hit wonders like William Shatner will turn up pictures of folks we may have never heard of, like someone named Mike Vogel.

So while Google Labs' pre-built experimental searches for its first public incarnation of Similar Images, unveiled Wednesday, does demonstrate an uncanny ability to isolate Paris Hilton pictures from its index, the fact that most of those pictures are labeled "Paris Hilton" anyway suggests that these are not real-world experiments. In the real world, people are looking for a picture of that person in that show with the other guy with the weird hair, or a painting from an artist with the funky name. They're looking for the imaging algorithm to fill in the gaps for the information they don't have on hand, not to demonstrate the ability to mimic a successful search when the information is in front of our face.

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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 from Fileforum now.

One of the nicest new features in Microsoft Windows 7 concerns the revised taskbar, specifically how many more choices are available to you when you right-click an icon, or when you just hover over it to see where all your open windows are. In Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1, which went live just minutes ago, the browser's integration with the Win7 taskbar is now on a par with that of Internet Explorer 8.

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According to Reuters today, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia will reportedly be shutting down its N-Gage gaming service. The shutdown will come six years after the mobile phone and gaming system hybrid concept debuted and was quickly retired; and nearly four years after it was re-invented as a part of Nokia's smartphone ecosystem, and later integrated with the Ovi platform.

Nokia intends to stop publishing new N-Gage titles and eventually wind down the service by the end of next year. Games will still be a major part of the Ovi platform, available in the Ovi Store under store.ovi.com/games, but the dedicated N-Gage brand is finally being scuttled.

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