MAJOR QUAKE STRIKES INDONESIA

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- A major earthquake struck Indonesia on Wednesday -- initially categorized as magnitude 7.4 before being downgraded to 7.0 by geological officials.

Deustche Bank employees exit their building in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Wednesday after a major 7.0 earthquake.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

A tsunami watch went into effect and quickly expired, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The quake was centered 242 km (150 miles) from the capital, Jakarta, according the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was about 60 km (37.3 miles) deep.

In Tasikmalaya, a city in the Indonesian island of Java, some older buildings were damaged and people panicked in the streets because there was no electricity, according to a witness named Maya.

Tasikmalaya is about 142 km (88 miles) from the epicenter.

John Aglionby, a journalist with the Financial Times, was in Jakarta when the earthquake struck. Watch him describe the evacuation after the quake hit »

"The whole building started to sway. People got very serious," Aglionby told CNN. "People left the building. But there was no signs of damage here."

About three weeks ago, a series of earthquakes -- ranging in magnitude from 4.7 to 6.7 -- struck off the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island.

At least seven people were injured and one building collapsed in Padang City in West Sumatra, officials said.

ATI Radeon HD 4770 In CrossFire: Unbeatable At $220

Perhaps I was a little hard on ATI’s new Radeon HD 4770 in last week’s review. Excited to see planned pricing at $99, it was disappointing when ATI raised the tag to $109, putting the card smack dab between the still-compelling Radeon HD 4830 and Radeon HD 4850 512 MB.

Before that, I was also pretty critical of ATI’s Radeon HD 4890. Yeah, it’s a nice refresh of a successful GPU, but do I want to pay an extra $70 for 10% more performance? Not really. The Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 are already fantastic deals at $180-$190. ATI was clearly just filling in a price gap where it thought it had a chance to upsell some extra clock speed rather than going for its competition’s jugular, as it did with the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 launch.

With multiple Radeon HD 4770s in-hand, though, my tune is much different.

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Tag Team, Back Again

The day before the 4770 launched, we received a second card to verify that the fan speed issue we originally experienced was fixed. We didn’t have time to run a set of CrossFire numbers, but your feedback in the comments section made it clear that enthusiasts wanted to see how a pair of these cards stacked up to some of the higher-priced options out there. Fair enough. We were actually pretty curious, too.

At $109 each, a pair of Radeon HD 4770s costs roughly $220. There’s no exact equivalent single-card solution at that same price point right now. A Radeon HD 4870 1 GB runs right around $190 and a GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 can be found as low as $180. Naturally, we’d need to see a pair of Radeon HD 4770s beat both of those less expensive options.

On the other end of the spectrum, a Radeon HD 4890 runs about $250. Most GeForce GTX 275s cost about $10 more than that. We’re comparing the CrossFire’d 4770s to a single Radeon HD 4890, but not the GeForce GTX 275. If you want more information on how the 4890 and GTX 275 compare, check out our GeForce GTX 275 review. The two cards are fairly similar, with the GTX 275 generally a bit faster. Instead, we have a little surprise later in the story: 4770s against Nvidia's GeForce GTX 280.

You also wanted to see a few other points explored: maximum overclocking outside of ATI’s Catalyst Control Center and GPU temperatures (in light of the 40 nm process shrink). Both of those are included here as well, in addition to updated power graphs to reflect the extra energy needed by two Radeon HD 4770s.

MySpace is ACQUIRED iLike

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta has confirmed in a Wednesday conference call that the News Corp.-owned social network has "entered into an agreement to acquire iLike," following rumors earlier in the week.

iLike's co-founders will remain at the company and stay headquartered in Seattle; the service will be "unaffected by the acquisition" in the short term.

Van Natta explained in the conference call that the acquisition is on behalf of MySpace Inc. rather than its MySpace Music division, a joint venture with the major record labels, because the company plans to extend its technology to other areas of entertainment such as gaming and possibly film. He highlighted the "discovery" technology that iLike has built and suggested that MySpace planned to integrate it into some of its other properties.

No terms of the deal were disclosed, but reports have indicated that iLike was sold at quite a bargain--something in the neighborhood of $20 million total--because its ad-supported, streaming music model failed to rake in the profits that investors hoped it would.

Van Natta denied that the deal had been delayed due to iLike board disputes or tax issues, as some reports had suggested.

But it's unclear as to how the deal will affect iLike's relationship with Facebook. The social network's developer platform has been home to much of iLike's activity, and now that it will be owned by Facebook's closest rival, there's a chance that Facebook could restrict or block the app. Van Natta, Facebook's former chief operating officer, said that iLike's apps are part of "a lot of different social networks' experience. We're excited about just continuing to expand that experience to other areas of entertainment that MySpace has assets in."

Meanwhile, Van Natta claimed that MySpace Music is "doing extremely well" and that "we absolutely expect MySpace Music to be an important part of MySpace...for years to come." Several months ago, rumors were swirling around the music industry that its performance hadn't been up to expectations.

Windows 7 will run 120 days for free, Microsoft confirms

Computerworld - Like its predecessor, Windows 7 can be used for up to 120 days without providing a product activation key, Microsoft confirmed today.

Although Microsoft generally touts a 30-day time limit for users to activate their copies of the company's operating system, a little-known command designed for corporate administrators can be used by anyone to "reset" the countdown up to three times.

Late yesterday, the Windows Secrets newsletter published step-by-step instructions on using a single-line command to add an additional 90 days to the stock 30-day grace period.

Microsoft allows users to install and run any version of Windows 7 for up to 30 days without requiring a product activation key, a 25-character alphanumeric string that proves the copy is legitimate. During the 30-day grace period, Windows 7 operates as if it has been activated. As the grace period shrinks, however, increasingly-frequent messages appear on the screen. For example, on days four through 27, a pop-up asks the user to activate once each day. During days 28 and 29, the pop-up displays every four hours, while on Day 30, it appears hourly.

But by invoking the "slmgr -rearm" command at a Windows 7 command prompt, users can reset the time-until-activation to 30 days, said Woody Leonard, a contributing editor to Windows Secrets and the author of several computer books, including Windows Vista All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies.

"You can run the -rearm trick a total of three times," said Leonard. "If you perform a -rearm at the end of each 30-day period, you end up with 120 days of full, unfettered Windows 7 use, without having to supply an activation key."

Leonard tested the command on Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacturing), the final build of the operating system that Microsoft has already shipped to computer makers and distributed to IT professionals and developers who subscribe to the TechNet and MSDN services.

Microsoft confirmed that "-rearm" can be used as many as three times by Windows 7 users to avoid activation. "This means [that] a total of 120 days total time is available as a grace period to customers that take advantage of -rearm," said a company spokeswoman.

Nor is extending the grace period a violation of the Windows 7 End User License Agreement (EULA), the spokeswoman said.

Windows Secrets and others published information about the same grace period extension two years ago, shortly after Microsoft launched Vista. "Rearm is the same in Windows 7 as in Vista," noted Brian Livingston, the editor of Windows Secrets, in an interview yesterday.

Microsoft introduced product activation in 2001's Office XP and also used it in that year's Windows XP. The feature was toughened up for Vista, however; after the grace period, non-activated PCs running Vista dropped into what Microsoft called "reduced functionality" mode. In reduced mode, users could only browse the Web with Internet Explorer, and then only for an hour before being forced to again log on.

In early 2008, however, Microsoft revamped that process, which some had dubbed a "kill switch," in favor of a black background and constant nagging reminders. Later in 2008, Microsoft introduced the same procedures to Windows XP when it rolled out Service Pack 3 (SP3).

In February 2009, Microsoft said Windows 7 would use the same reminders, a black screen and persistent notices.

"We knew that -rearm worked on the beta and RC [of Windows 7], but until it was finished, there was no way to be sure it would work in the final," said Livingston.

Although Windows 7 won't go on sale until Oct. 22, the RTM build has leaked to file-sharing sites. In fact, the build that Microsoft later identified as RTM hit BitTorrent almost a week before the company officially announced the milestone.

The -rearm command isn't the only way users can run Windows 7 without paying. Until about 11 a.m. ET Thursday, users can download a free copy of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC), the last public preview issued before Microsoft wrapped up work on the OS.