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The new millennium is the millennia of PC games. But before PCs became a household phenomenon, the only games of its kind that kids knew, and a whole generation of Americans have grown up playing, were arcade games.

Arcade games consist of a simple, yet bulky machine, with a colorful screen, and some sticks or buttons to play with, and a device to put coins in, which allows the game to be played for a particular period of time.

Today, you can find arcade games that run on computers, using emulators. But before that had happened, arcade games were typically found, apart from the especial entertainment centres and video arcades, in restaurants, malls and movie halls. Kids and grown ups alike played mainly three types of arcade games: the famed pinball, video games or redemption games.

Yet, the ancestry of arcade games could be traced to the hugely popular games commonly known as the "amusement park midway games" like ball toss game and shooting galleries which were popular at the beginning of the 20th century.

The 1930s saw the first coin-operated pinball machines. Though being made of wood with all functions mechanical rather than electronic and being a far cry from the electronic ones that were to come much later, they were still quite a hit. The late seventies would see these mechanical pinballs being replaced by electronic games.

The change in fortunes of arcade games happened with the formation of a company called Atari in 1972. This company created the coin-operated machines, beginning with the electronic ping pong game, called Pong. Pong was a huge hit, and led to even more home video game systems being introduced onto the market.

Many games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders became huge hits in the late seventies and early eighties, paving the way to a revolution. The last breath to the arcade games was provided by the emergence of two player fighting games like Street Fighter II , Mortal Kombat Fatal Fury, King of fighters etc in the early 90s. However, this was not to redeem the fate of arcade games completely, as the growth in computers and video technology saw the emergence of new type of games, including PC games and games that ran on special consoles such as the Playstation, Gameboy and the X-box pushing arcade games into the sidelines, to almost the end of their existence.

Arcade Games provides detailed information on Arcade Games, Free Arcade Games, Online Arcade Games, Real Arcade Games and more. Arcade Games is affiliated with Online Computer Games.

Politico - A visibly disgusted FBI special agent Robert Grant stood at a podium in Chicago during a press conference today announcing the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich and hurling his contempt at the entire political culture of the state of Illinois.

An unfortunate truth in the area of TV technology is that the best technology is not always the one that triumphs when two competing technologies go into competition with each other. The history of TV technology is littered with examples of this. The one that most people are most familiar with is the format war between the Betamax and VHS video cassette tape formats. Even though VHS won that particular format war, many people have argued that Betamax was actually the superior format. A less prominent example can be seen in the early Laser Disc video format that was introduced at about the same time as the VHS and Betamax tape formats. Laser Discs were essentially primitive DVD's that were about the same size as an old fashioned vinyl LP record. Even though DVD's are the preferred format over video cassettes now, the two video cassette formats soundly defeated the Laser Disc format when it came to consumer video.

Right now we can see another example of this unfolding with the High Def DVD format war. There are two formats in this war that are both vying for control over the market. One format is called Blu-ray and it's backed by Sony and a number of other computer hardware manufacturers and movie studios. Its rival is called HD DVD, which was invented by Toshiba and is backed by Microsoft and a few other movie studios. Both of these formats are based on similar laser technology, both use discs that are the same size as standard DVD's, and neither format can be played on the other format's players.

The Blu-ray format is the superior one in terms of data storage capacity. It can store about twenty five gigabytes per side of a single disc for a total of fifty gigabytes per disc. By contrast, the HD DVD format can store about fifteen gigabytes per side of a disc for a total of only about thirty gigabytes. Twenty gigabytes per disc is an extremely big difference between the two formats. To be fair though, HD DVD has some proprietary interactive features that Blu-ray doesn't have.

In spite of Blu-ray's technical superiority- at least as a storage media for computers- and the fact that it has been outselling HD DVD by two to one in terms of number of discs sold, Blu-ray has failed to win the format war. That's because a format war is waged through propaganda, forming alliances, and pricing tactics at least as much as it's waged through technological expertise.

The latest blow to Blu-ray's superior position has been the decision of Paramount to release high def DVD's only in the HD DVD format. Previous to this announcement, Paramount had been releasing its titles in both formats, but now it has taken a pay off in order to market and produce HD DVD exclusively.

This has been a blow to consumers and retailers as well as the Blu-ray format. Retailers who are currently selling Paramount titles published on Blu-ray won't be getting restocks of those discs, and Paramount has even made an about face on announcements that it will publish recently released movies on Blu-ray.

While this move may be good for HD DVD, and Paramount may have gotten a short term profit from it, Paramount's reputation is sure to be damaged. Perhaps even irreparably.

N.Evans writes articles for consumers who want to find the best Satellite TV offers currently available. She has written for many major publications about the latest Direct Tv Offers and Direct TV Specials.

AP - Despite the rise of DNA fingerprinting and other "CSI"-style crime-fighting wizardry, more and more people in this country are getting away with murder. FBI figures reviewed by The Associated Press show that the homicide clearance rate, as detectives call it, dropped from 91 percent in 1963 - the first year records were kept in the manner they are now - to 61 percent in 2007.