Sony to invest $75 million in Blu-ray disc plant

Sony has been given the go-ahead to invest $75.8 million in Blu-ray production at its Indiana disc production facility. Terre Haute city council granted Sony's Digital Audio Disc (Sony DADC) unit two tax abatements that will enable the company to phase in taxes on the new plant over a decade. ...more

Suicide scuppered with spam attack

A suicidal Belgian was convinced not to carry out a suicide attempt after being bombarded by e-mail from two concerned policemen. A female friend of the anonymous man alerted the officers after he'd sent her an e-mail saying that he wanted to kill himself. Officers Daniel Van Tuycom and Stephane Lefevre tried to track the desperate man down to the local Brussels cybercafe from where his initial e-mail was sent. ...more

LaCie unveils 'ultra slim' and 'ultra fast' double layer DVD drives

LaCie has introduced two new double-layer DVDRW drives, with speed and size in mind. The d2 'ultra fast' writes single layer discs at 16x, filling 4.7GB in about six minutes, and double-layer at 4x and costs ?66 for an internal mechanism, ?95 for a dual FireWire/USB interface. ...more

Dabber attack worms its way along the Sasser trail

A new virus named Dabber has been discovered that uses a flaw in the code of the Sasser worm to infect systems. Computers infected with Sasser are therefore susceptible to Dabber, which uses a vulnerability in the FTP component to infect computers in the same fashion as Sasser. The Sasser worm downloads copies of itself onto vulnerable computers it discovers via FTP. ...more

iPod nano goes multi-coloured

Apple has unveiled a new multicoloured and thinner and lighter iPod nano range, boasting 24 hours of battery life and more than twice the music capacity. The new aluminium enclosure is available in five colours - echoing back to the iPod mini - and has a brighter display as well as the new Search and Quick Scroll features designed to make it easier to find songs. 'iPod nano is the world's most popular digital music player, and we've completely redesigned it to make it even better,' said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. ...more