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Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been, what we hoped it would be. The Batman Begins to Vista's Batman and Robin. While superficially both are kinda the same (Batman!), there's a completely different thought process at work. Our walkthrough and videos showed you how the new user experience is something to be excited about; now we want to show you what it is under the hood that enables the wholly hypeworthy experience to be all it can be. And why Windows 7 will totally smash Vista's kidneys.

Like Elvis in '68, Microsoft is itching for a "comeback," and Windows 7 is the perfect excuse. In fact, this week in LA at the Professional Developers Conference, Windows 7 officially shoved Vista aside. Having suffered through the often deserved criticisms of that ill-fated OS installment, Microsoft's people are thrilled to tears to be able to talk about something (anything!) else. On Sunday, they took journalists through a lively 7-hour orientation on Win 7, then handed off a Dell XPS M1330 loaded with pre-beta Build 6801. Thankfully for the overworked, underappreciated developers at Redmond, it's surprisingly stable, and its look and feel already puts Vista to shame.

Shoe-maker ASICS commissioned a gigantic Lite Brite in NYC in celebration of something or other (probably a shoe launch) this month that takes the Guinness World Record for largest Lite Brite painting. You know, those things you played with when you were six? At 300,000+ pieces and 11x15 feet, it demolishes the previous record of 125,000+ pieces by PA artist Mark Beekman that took him over 15 months to complete.

The UK Ministry of Defense has just declassified nineteen secret files detailing UFO encounters over the past decades, one of them involving a USAF Sabre fighter pilot who was ordered to fire at will against an unidentified flying object in British airspace. Unfortunately-or fortunately-lieutenant Milton Torres lost the contact after the UFO left the scene at a whooping 9,941 miles per hour. According to him, it had the proportions of an aircraft carrier: The blip was burning a hole in the radar with its incredible intensity. It was similar to a blip I had received from B52s and seemed to be a magnet of light. It had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier.

At 16.1 million square feet, Dubai's International Airport Terminal 3 has not only became the shiniest airport terminal ever, but it's also the largest in the world, beating the 10.6 million of the previous record holder, the firebreathing Olympic terminal 3 at Beijing International Airport.