All Things News

Straight from New America Media: “European journalists and investigators are tracking the mysterious deaths of two security experts — one in Italy, the other in Greece — who had uncovered extensive spyware in their telecommunications firms. So far, despite possible U.S. links to the extralegal, politicized spy operations, few U.S. media have picked up the trail.”

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Straight from Engadget: “Most new technologies have some teething problems as the early kinks are worked out, but it seems like the Blu-ray camp is experiencing more than its fair share of growing pains — first the delays, then news that the supposed format-savior PS3 might price itself right out of the market, and finally the revelation that first-gen BD-P1000’s were shipping with a picture-degrading chip. Well now it appears that there’s even more bad news for Sony’s pride and joy, as The Digital Bits’ Bill Hunt is confirming what many people already suspected after reading their P1000 manuals: the $1,000 player, as currently configured, will be unable to support movies on upcoming 50GB discs. Hunt cites multiple anonymous industry sources in reporting that Samsung is still having problems getting 50GB discs to work on its machines — production titles weren’t even available to test before the players launched — and that both Sony and Pioneer are experiencing the same issues with their upcoming products. Luckily for current P1000 owners, it seems that this incompatibility is of the type that will eventually be solved by a firmware upgrade, but until that time, movie studios have been forced to delay longer titles like Lawrence of Arabia and Black Hawk Down — no doubt frustrating some consumers. With so much on the line here, it’s clear that this issue will be resolved sooner or later; however, with the HD DVD camp already offering cheaper (and more) hardware, a larger media selection, and garnering better initial reviews than Blu-ray, it’s not clear how much time is left before the so-called format war begins leaning decidedly in HD DVD’s favor.”

Straight from Slashdot: “”The PS3’s performance has been downgraded again, according to the Inquirer.”

From the article: “We can’t tell you why the GPU lost nearly 10% of it’s clock, it could be an NVidia screwup, or it could be Sony/Cell. Either way, it just became much less of an overwhelming value, but you get a DRM infected drive for ‘free’ either way.”

Interesting, but keep in mind this is The Inquirer. 9 out of 10 doctors recommend salt with their articles. Relatedly, the choice comments from Penny Arcade this past weekend about Sony’s console are wandering around the internets today. From that article: “We’ve already talked about it, there’s no chance we’re buying a PS3 at launch.”"

Straight from Joystiq: “In a textbook case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, Sony is reportedly halting shipments of blue laser diodes to other manufacturers to ensure they will have enough available for the PlayStation 3 launch. Taiwan’s DigiTimes.com is reporting that lower yield rates than expected mean that laser manufacturers, including Sony, can’t meet the demand from the manufacturers of HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives and players. Despite recent analyst predictions that Sony will not be able to meet its own projected unit numbers for the PS3 launch, Sony still forcefully asserts that they will meet their commitments.”

Straight from Slashdot: “The WSJ has an article about opposition to programs that provide laptops to 6-8th grade kids. Detractors say that the kids are wasting too much time online browsing dangerous sites, instant messaging friends, and posting to Myspace. Parents are worried that serious learning is being neglected in the quest to ‘dazzle up presentations with fancy fonts instead of digging through library books.’ Some parents however are ‘enthusiastic laptop proponents,’ one saying the laptop has helped her twelve-year-old son ‘master critical professional skills like how to compile a PowerPoint presentation.’”

Straight from Slashdot: “Lockheed Martin has won a contract to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle that will eventually take humans to the moon and then on to Mars. This vehicle will hopefully also replace the aging space shuttle fleet. According to NASA the vehicle will have manned missions by 2014 and moon missions by no later by 2020.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Amateur astronomers will be excited to note that they can witness the impact of the SMART-1 probe crashing into the moon. The impact is scheduled for the morning of September 2nd (PDT). From the article: ‘There’s nothing wrong with the spacecraft, which is wrapping up a successful 3-year mission to the Moon. SMART-1’s main job was to test a European-built ion engine. It worked beautifully, propelling the craft in 2003 on a unique spiral path from Earth to the Moon. From lunar orbit, SMART-1 took thousands of high-resolution pictures and made mineral maps of the Moon’s terrain. One of its most important discoveries was a “Peak of Eternal Light,” a mountaintop near the Moon’s north pole in constant, year-round sunlight. Peaks of Eternal Light are prime real estate for solar-powered Moon bases.”