The once undisputed king of video game consoles appears to be back.

Led by the widespread success of the Wii console, Nintendo revised its sales and profit numbers for its fiscal year that ended in March for the fourth time, with higher than expected demand for DS games also contributing.

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Marketwatch broke the news late Wednesday that Google's board of directors voted down a shareholder petition put forth by the New York City Comptroller's office, which would have compelled its management not to engage in "pro-active censorship," and not to host users' private data in countries that place restrictions on their citizens' Internet use.

Comptroller William Thompson, Jr., issued the petition last December on behalf of the New York City Pension Funds, which at the time, according to the comptroller's office, held $276.2 million in Google shares on behalf of city employees. A similar shareholder petition was issued at the same time to the board of Yahoo, in which the pension fund holds $110.5 million in shares based on last December's value.

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PERSPECTIVE Just days after BetaNews responded to a reader inquiry about the Windows Animated Cursor exploit, asking how it affects users who don't use animated cursors, by hypothetically suggesting a phishing site could e-mail .ANI files disguised as revealing pictures of celebrity Britney Spears, researchers at WebSense Security Labs discovered an apparent e-mail spamming source which does precisely that.

Apparently users began receiving e-mails with the subject line, "Hot Pictures of Britiney Speers" (note the intentional misspelling to bypass filters). Users clicking on the embedded links were apparently taken to one of any number of Web sites that utilize so-called obfuscated JavaScript - the replacement of easy-to-read code with mangled symbols that can still be parsed by the interpreter - to redirect users to a single site. There, the .ANI animated cursor exploit BetaNews reported on last week is delivered as a Trojan horse file.

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AOL is seeking beta testers for TimeWarner's GameTap network, which provides on-demand access to games of old such as Asteroids and Zork. The service frequently adds new features such as customizable controller mappings, and needs a team of testers to provide feedback.

To apply, visit GameTap's beta site and use the password: CoralSea. Fill out GameTap's beta application with as much detail as possible. Not everyone who applies will be accepted, and your answers will be used to determine your qualifications for beta testing.

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AMD is planning to go on the offensive with a new marketing push disputing Intel's claims of a lead in processor performance. AMD's newest Opteron, available at speeds of 3GHz, is said to be up to 15.5 percent faster than a comparable Xeon chip.

Current Opteron models offer up to 2.8GHz of computing power, and AMD says its rival's claims are based on benchmarks of tests that have since been revised because they didn't accurately represent real-world conditions.

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While it still may be a few years before we can officially wave goodbye to VGA and DVI, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced approval of DisplayPort 1.1 as the new industry standard for flat panel displays, projectors, PCs and consumer electronics devices.

DisplayPort 1.1 most notably adds support High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) version 1.3. HDCP is the copyright protection technology required by both Blu-ray and HD DVD content, which prevents the digital video signal from being hijacked and recorded to unprotected media.

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For years, tech enthusiasts have been compiling hotfixes into unofficial service packs for Windows, offering brave users a quick way to update their operating systems before Microsoft finishes its own. But for Vista, Microsoft is warning users not to trust these third-party roll-ups.

In a blog entry posted Tuesday, Vista product manager Nick White specifically mentions one such "Service Pack 1 preview" for Microsoft new operating system. The fact that Microsoft is preparing SP1 for Vista is a given, but the company has remained coy about its potential release date.

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Sprint's plans to link a customer's cable account to their cell phone may run into trouble as new FCC privacy regulations announced Monday will forbid such an offering. Customers will be reqired to opt into the program.

Usually, rates of opting-in among consumers for services are low, which leads some to believe it will cripple adoption of the cable-wireless tie-in.

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The Internet's growing influence on American politics is becoming more apparent this past week as data on first quarter fundraising numbers shows several candidates raking in millions in online donations.

Most recent of these announcements is that of Senator Barack Obama, who announced he had raised $25 million in the first quarter on Wednesday - a staggering $6.9 million of that coming from the Internet. He led all candidates in soliciting online contributions.

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Mozilla Labs has begun work on a new feature called The Coop, aimed at adding social networking capabilities to the Firefox browser. The application could be used to share a variety of Web content.

In a blog post introducing the new project, Mozilla Labs' Mike Beltzner says developers wanted to create new ways for friends to share links, thus creating "The Coop."

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Google Desktop 1.0 is now available for Macs, the search giant announced Wednesday. The software is more basic than its Windows counterpart, focusing strictly on searching for files, e-mails and Web pages. A "Quick Search Box" resides on the desktop and displays results to queries in a dropdown menu.

Like Spotlight, which is built into Mac OS X, Google Desktop indexes the entire computer in the background. It can also pull up Gmail and Web history, in addition to integrating with Google's Web search by adding a "Desktop" link. Unlike Google Desktop for Windows, the Mac version does not currently include the Google Sidebar or e-mail client integration.

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On the day after it began receiving applications for H-1B work visas, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service reported yesterday it had already received more than double the number of applications it is permitted by law to grant for 2008. The same limit took two months to reach last year.

While H-1B grants are officially capped at 65,000, USCIS reported receiving over 150,000 applications as of Monday afternoon.

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The Federal Communications Commission has ended an inquiry into allowing the use of cell phones, saying the public comments filed in response to its notice that it was investigating the rule lacked sufficient technical evidence to overturn the ban.

An inquiry may be reopened at a later date, pending more technical data. The FCC first opened up the proceeding to public comment in December 2004 as part of a ruling to allow high-speed wireless Internet on plane flights.

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Apple on Wednesday refreshed its Mac Pro line, adding a new 8-core behemoth using Intel's new "Clovertown" quad-core Xeon processors. Also, a new quad-core model was introduced. The base configuration for the 8-core Mac Pro includes two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, with 1GB DDR2 RAM expandable to 16GB. A 250GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics card, and a 16x SuperDrive are also included.

The base price for that model will be $3,997 USD, although better configurations could push that figure several thousand higher. The new 3.0GHz quad-core model, using two Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors, will retail for $3,298 USD. The new models are the first refresh to the Mac Pro since Apple introduced the Intel-based lineup in August of last year.

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A lady in Washington state who apparently purchased a computer in late 2006 bearing the "Vista Capable" sticker, and who only later discovered it was only capable of running Vista Home Basic, has filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft in her home state, seeking in excess of $5 million.

The lawsuit alleges Microsoft misrepresented the capacity of computers to run all of Vista's purported features, directly citing Acer senior vice president Jim Wong's comments last October that "Premium is the real Vista" as indication that at least one PC maker believed Basic was not the real Vista.

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