New dual-layer DVD-burning drives will be released very soon by Philips and Sony that will double the capacity of DVD drives, making a complete copy of your dual-layer DVDs theoretically possible. It will use dual layer technology that will hold up to 8.5GB, and will cost around $230 for an internal and $330 for external, burning all 8.5GB in approximately 45 minutes

Mark Maughan, an accountant and professional moron, Googled his name and found some alarming, false, misleading and injurious information about himself and his firm. Therefore, he is now suing Google, Yahoo (which used Google as its search engine at the time), AOL (for using Google to enhance its search results) and Time Warner (because they’re the same company as AOL) for libel. Specifically, his lawyer John Girardi believes that Google’s PageRank algorithm takes known good information and twists its context when displaying search results

Innocents with the temerity to run the William Gibson monikered Black Ice firewall are catching it big-time. Some wicked person hand-coded an amazingly teensy 900-byte Black Ice specific worm that burrows through a flaw in Black Ice and whacks PCs hard enough to ruin them and despoil their contents. Virus guys used to just write viruses. Now they’re bold enough to try to wreck corporations. Life gets a little more Gibsonian ever day — via Beyond the Beyond

Telstra faces a fine of $10 million — rising by $1 million a day — and possible legal action from rivals unless it cuts the price it charges competitors for its wholesale broadband internet service as a matter of urgency

Some people living in some of the most inaccessible areas of India are enjoying an improved postal service — thanks to the combining of e-mail with traditional snail mail

AOL has decided to take a fresh approach to fighting spam and is now blocking the spammer’s web address. The philosophy is, if the customers can’t visit spammers sites, spammers will not be able to make any money

ARIA have released figures that show for 2003, album sales have reached an all time high. In fact, according to Peter Martin, who recently went on Australian radio, before file sharing and CD burning they were selling 10 million less. Total unit sales were also at an all time high at 65.6 million. CD single sales declined 1.9 million over the year, but as Peter said file downloading is doing a better job. Should help Kazaa’s legal problems. Some independent music stores are thriving despite the competition from illegal downloads on the Internet. The stores are finding that file sharing can help create a buzz online that can lead to more sales, according to a panel of independent music store owners who spoke at the South by Southwest Music Conference & Festival

The Panasonic ruggedised Toughbook, a laptop that, in its most extreme configuration, can survive being run over by a truck. Those boxes cost $5000, but a semi-ruggedised version, which is speced with spill-resistant keyboards, hard casings, and gel-encased disk drives is only 10% more costly to build than a standard machine. Analysts say 20% of mainstream laptops fail in the first year, usually because of accidental damage. That rises to 35% once a notebook leaves its docking station and to more than 50% for machines that are used outdoors or on shop floors. But the failure rate of rugged or semi-rugged machines is just 5%

A handful of Bagle worm variants are attacking Windows users with an insidious new twist: They can infect computers without tricking them into opening a file attachment — opening an e-mail is all it takes

At 22mm, Toshiba’s prototype of its latest multi-gigabyte hard disk drive is the smallest in the world — at least as of this moment

Telstra will be forced to change its wholesale ADSL pricing or face fines worth millions of dollars for anti-competitive behaviour