As much as some would like to envision a world entirely bereft of disk-based media, with Blu-ray being the medium's swan song, that ain't happening. Sony's already looking to the future, and in cahoots with Tohoku University, it has developed a blue-violet laser capable of 100 watt output. That's reportedly more than 100 times the “world's highest output values for conventional blue-violet pulse semiconductor lasers.” In the press release, the company said its tested using su……

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Oh Samsung, always setting world records. At an intimate (though slightly awkward) press conference yesterday, Samsung pulled the wraps off its newest SE-S084 external DVD as well as its 12x SH-B123 Blu-ray drives. The former is pretty much your standard external 24x CD-ROM / 8x DVD-ROM peripheral, except it's only 17mm thick. Samsung is claiming it's the world's thinnest, but in all honesty, we weren't all that blown away by its slimness. We have an HP drive sitting right here ……

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When malware writers fail to generate clean, reliable code, just who can you trust? On the heels of many Windows XP 32-bit users facing blue screen of death errors and unwanted reboots, Microsoft is now confirming that there's a little bit of malicious code sitting at the root of it all. A rootkit, to be specific, one called Alureon that compromises the atapi.sys file and others. This rootkit makes a system call via an address that, after the update, no longer corresponds to the particular ……

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Every week Stephen Speicher contributes The Clicker, an opinion column
on entertainment and technology:99% of the time I'm just
your average mild-mannered tech-writer. However, every now and again, when the conditions are just right, I stroll
over to my bookcase, reach to the top shelf and gently pull the third book from the left, "Celine Dion: The
Magic Behind the Singing Horse." This simple action puts into motion a Rube-Goldbergian series of events
which eventually reveals the……

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Thermaltake's Level 10 PC chassis, a 47-pound beautiful behemoth in every way, has completed its almost exactly 9-month march from a March design unveiling to a “now shipping” retail page on Newegg. At $849.99, it ain't cheap, but let's not forget what's really important here: it fits three Blu-ray writers. Happy shopping / minor debt!

[Thanks, Keenan]

……

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LG is all over the dual-format optical game this next week. In addition to the HD DVD + Blu-ray combo player they just announced, they also touting a new Super Multi Blue dual-format drive for PCs. Not only will the GGW-H10N playback your Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, and HD DVD media, it'll also record — yes r……

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While Sony's certainly had its fair share of blue laser supply issues, and the current generation of HD DVD / Blu-ray burners are sluggish at best, it looks like the first step towards marginally acceptable write speeds to next generation formats has been taken. According to Nikkei, Sanyo has developed a ……

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Even at this stage in the game, there aren't many drives out there sporting both logos, but LG's HL-DT-ST BD-RE GGW-H10N 1.01 drive — better known as the Super Multi Blue to the layperson — has the Blu-ray and HD DVD logos sitting up front in perfect harmony. Announced at this year's CES, the d……

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The entirety of civilization seems fairly well and dedicated to one-upping each other in the “green” department, and Samsung is looking to up the ante once again by stating that “blue is the new green” and putting out the new Blue Earth solar phone to prove it. Sadly, the Blue Earth isn’t quite ready to ……

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Difficult though it may be to believe, Panasonic showcased a conceptual in-dash BD deck of its own back in October of 2007. Obviously, nothing has really come of that, so Mitsubishi’s stepping in with a prototype of its own. It’s stated that the player has only a third of the volume compared to a tra……

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