RIAA tells students to drop out to pay fines

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is apparently advising students in the US to drop out of college so they can work to pay off their fines. One MIT student blog details what happened when she negotiated with an RIAA representative over paying the $3,750 fine imposed after she was found to be illegally swapping music over the Internet. After being told that the RIAA does not negotiate settlements, the student was offered a six month repayment plan. ...more

Microsoft twists knife on Lindows in Dutch court

Undeterred by Lindows change of its trading name to Linspire Microsoft's lawyers have returned to the attack in the Dutch courts. Despite losing in US and Canadian courts, Microsoft finally secured a victory in the Netherlands by convincing the court that 'Lindows' infringed the Microsoft Windows trademark. It has now returned to the courts there in order to finally force Lindows to give up the name entirely Despite the change of trading and product names and website, the sharp-eyed Microsoft lawyers noticed a reference to the 'Lindows' holding company at the bottom of the Linspire. ...more

Hitachi launches DVD camcorder

It didn't seem that long ago that MiniDV was the hottest format in the world of home videography. Now, Hitachi has launched a new DVD-RAM video camera that will have enthusiasts dribbling with anticipation. Using 8cm DVD-RAM discs with a 2. ...more

Toshiba's quantum leap

As processor manufacturers like Intel and AMD produce CPUs using increasingly smaller processes, Toshiba is developing a single electron transistor (SET) to jump in when the established process becomes too unstable. The drive to reduce the scale of processor production is twofold: it increases speed, as electrons have less distance to travel, and reduces heat output, allowing the processor to be pushed faster without the need for expensive cooling. But there is a limit, predicted to be around the sub-100 nanometer mark, where the distance between circuit paths is so small that electrons may jump across. ...more

Toshiba completes dual layer HD DVD recording spec

Toshiba has announced the completion of the specification for dual layer recordable HD DVD discs. Dual layer discs will double the maximum recordable capacity of the format to 30GB, more than the 25GB currently provided by the rival Blu-ray format, although that may increase before the first drives become commercially available. The new HD DVD discs shares key manufacturing processes with the existing DVD-R format including the use of an organic dye as the data storage medium and a spin-coating process for depositing the dye. ...more