AMD tops off $2.5bn Dresden manufacturing plant

AMD 'topped off' its new manufacturing plant in Dresden in Germany yesterday. Fab 36 is expected to produce 300mm wafers ready to build AMD 64-bit chips in two years' time. The company expects the plant to turn out the first 300mm silicon test wafers in the middle of next year with the commercially produced chips due in the first half of 2006. ...more

Google hits text copyright wall

Google has backtracked on plans to put the full text of books from the world's leading libraries on the Internet. The search engine's plans have been widely criticised as a clear breach of copyright and it has now agreed to withhold books where the copyright holders request it to do so. Adam M Smith, product manager for the Google Print project said that the new policy would balance the needs of users and publishers. ...more

Apple attacked over fragile nano screens

At first it was feted but now it seems flawed - reports have been growing of problems with Apple's mini music player, the iPod nano. Specifically, problems have been reported with the colour screens scratching or cracking. It seems questions are being raised about the suitability of the nano for everyday pocket use. ...more

See-through speakers

Today, we're going through the sound window. Matsushita has developed a pneumatically driven speaker that can be positioned over a screen and appear invisible to the eye. The sound window is basically a sealed layer of pressurised air underneath a diaphragm, which can be transparent, that acts as the speaker. ...more

The higher the ghost rating, the deader the site

There are millions and millions of Web pages hosted on servers around the world, but what happens when someone just forgets to update them? One site is dedicated to hunting down the ghost ships that pass in the cyber night. If you pop over to Ghostsites, you can see what happens to the forlorn Web sites that have been abandoned and neglected. If they took canine form, they'd be shipped off to Battersea Dogs' Home until a new owner came along. ...more