Its new segment time! Previously, I’ve been issuing news updates that consist of several stubs of stories that aren’t post-worthy individually. Well, Miscellanea isn’t exactly news, it is more like a collection of unrelated, cool stories that I want to bring to a larger audience. OK then, lets jump right into it.

First of all, Acer’s Vice President, James Wong, had said that they plan to release an open platform gaming console. To quote Gizmodo, “WTF?” Wong allegedly takes issue with the current proprietary, closed consoles that dominate the market. The console should use PC technology. I think the decision to make it entirely open platform closes off some potential money, but since it is good for the consumer, I’m fine with it. My German isn’t good enough to fully comprehend the original source, but if someone is better than Google Translator, feel free to repost it in the comments.

• GameStar (Translated English)
• Gamestar (Original Deutsch)

Lifehacker pointed out a special this week on the great tool FairUse 2 DVD ripper. This normally $20 utility is free for a limited time. It converts DVDs to video files in formats for virtually all devices such as an iPod, AppleTV, Zune, the Xbox 360, PS3, and TiVo, to name a few. It detects multiple TV shows on the same disc and will rip them as separate files. It works fine on XP and Vista, and emulates well in Wine under Linux. For Mac users, I can recommend Handbrake with the highest regards from personal experience.

A new mouse is on the block, and it beats the crap out of the old guys. The Razer Lachesis Gaming Mouse has a sensitivity of 4000 dots per inch. That is a completely unprecedented amount, and although this starts to travel in to the realm of the unnecessary, this mouse is awesome. Coming in at about $65, I could see dropping a couple bucks on this. Its got twice the precision of the Logitech G5, the previous top dogs. The programmable buttons can be game-specific, and the mouse is ambidextrous. Hit the above link for a full review from Techware Labs.