The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) announced this morning that effective May 2, Apple’s (AAPL) weighting in the widely followed tech index will decline significantly. Specifically, Apple’s weight will decline eight percent, from over 20% to nearly to 12%. Due in part to Apple’s recent success, the index was weighting the company twice as highly as it should have on a per-share basis. It appears that the “special rebalance” is necessary because Apple was pushing against the index’s rule that “any individual component security [cannot] represent more than 24% of the total market value of the index.”

Effectively Apple is being punished for being a well-managed high performer while Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), and others are being rewarded for lagging. While I und

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EVGA has posted pictures of their upcoming GTX 580 Classified, a card that caters to overclockers with a large heatsink and some unique features. 

In a forum posting, EVGA’s Jacob Freeman has shown the EVGA community a first glimpse of the upcoming GTX 580 Classified and it looks to be a monster of a card.  Sporting an ultra wide PCB and what can only be called a “unique” fan / heatsink design, this card is looking to follow in the footsteps of MSI’s Lightning, Gigabyte’s Super Overclock and ASUS’ Matrix series. 

With overclocking achievements first and foremost in EVGA’s mind, they have decked out the Classified with an array of cutting edge features like state of the art power circuitry, a dedicated 6-pin power connector for the GDDR5 memory, voltage read points, voltage inticator LEDs and dual switchable BIOS files (one of which is specifically designed to overcome the 580′s LN2 cold bug).

Unfortunately, the actual specifications and price of this card are closely guarded secrets for the time being but as we learn more, we’ll update this post. 

Samsungs Galaxy Tabs impending update to 10.1 will bring more with it than simple bug fixes, including features that span enterprise security, media streaming, touch-based usability and more.

Samsungs Media Hub is being pushed pretty hard, so the update will allow users access to streaming content that spans multiple devicesthe idea being that a user could rent a movie while sitting at their desktop, but finish watching it on their Galaxy Tab.

Multimedia use is a big deal for tablets, but the real major component of the update is the TouchWiz interface, which lays atop Android Honeycomb.

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At approximately 11:26 ET today, if weather permits, space shuttle Atlantis will embark on the final mission of NASAs space shuttle program.

Atlantis is scheduled to go on a 12-day mission, carrying only four astronauts (compared to the usual crew of six or seven). During the mission, it will visit the International Space Station, drop off about 9,500 supplies and spare parts and conduct an experiment to test new refueling and repair technology for satellites in orbit.

The weather forecast is far from optimal though showers and thunderstorms could be present in the launch area, and NASA says theres a 70% chance of delay.

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Every time someone goes out and buys a new TV, laptop, iPad, Android smartphone, or any such device they are using up some of our rare earth minerals which these gadgets require to work. They are called rare not because there is only a small amount on earth, but because the deposists are small and therefore require a lot of mining to recover very little.

Another problem exists in the fact China holds about 97% of the rare earth mineral market, and it decides how much exits the country.

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