An anonymous reader writes "DigiTimes reports that several major vendors, including Sony and Matsushita, have suspended shipments of the blue laser diodes that drive both high-def disc formats. The rumored laser shortage could result in shipment delays for new models of Blu-ray and HD DVD players and drives past the upcoming holiday season, cooling the next-gen DVD format war until 2007."

Planetrudy writes "Reuters reports that AOL has launched a new version of its Music Now subscription service. It's web-based, slick, performs well (fast page loads and downloads), and contains over 2.5M songs and 'thousands of videos.' This launch seems to be in line with AOL's 'tearing down the wall around the garden' strategy."

An anonymous reader writes to tell us FastCompany is reporting on the latest and greatest version of the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). While CFLs of the past may have been efficient, they certainly were not effective. However, according to the article, CFLs have come as far as cell phones have since the mid 80s while still maintaining that high efficiency. From the article: "if every one of 110 million American households bought just one [CFL], took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads."

Frightened_Turtle writes "Robert Heinlein's last novel, Variable Star , will be released in September. Completed by Spider Robinson at the behest of Heinlein's estate, the novel is based on the notes and outline created by Heinlein for the novel over 50 years ago. It was set aside and forgotten when Heinlein went to work on other projects. The story follows the life of Joel Johnston who — after having a fallout with his girlfriend and going on a bender — wakes up on a starship bound for the stars. Spider Robinson has done an excellent job maintaining Heinlein's style and flow throughout the novel. Want to check out the story for yourself? You can download the first eight chapters online from the 'Excerpts' link on the site as they are released over the next few weeks."

avtchillsboro writes to tell us The New York Times has adapted technology usually used for targeted advertising to censor a recent article from British viewers in an attempt to comply with local publishing rules. The New York Times explained that this move "arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial."

An anonymous reader writes "The buzz in the MMO blogosphere is yet another resurrection of the Class system vs. Skill system debate. A number of prominent online gaming bloggers have chimed in with their opinions on the subject, including: Scott Jennings, Raph Koster, Ryan Shwayder, Steve Danuser, Damion Schubert, and a host of others you can find linked on those blogs. The conclusion? Most of the devs favor class systems because of their simplicity and ease of communicating character roles, while a few devs and many players favor skill-based systems because of the freedom they provide for user customization."

BlueCup writes to tell us that Hewlett-Packard has deployed a large team consisting of many scientists and many more lawyers looking for possible ink patent infringement. With more than 4,000 patents on their ink formulations and cartridge design and a market share of more than 50 percent in the US HP depends heavily on the sale of ink to make profit after sometimes selling their printers at a loss in order to lock in the ink resale.

Above and beyond the announcement of their videogame last Friday, PAX apparently passed pleasantly for the PA fans who made it to Bellvue, WA this past weekend. Various news organs have a look at what transpired. eToyChest has a journal of each day, with firsthand accounts and lots of pictures. Gamasutra covers the Penny Arcade Scholarship announced at the event; $10k towards an education to get yourself into the games industry. Kotaku was there to liveblog the keynote, while Joystiq covers the making a comic panel. For wrap-up, we have an IGN report, and the ever exhaustive 1up minisite for everything you'd want to know.

The best games on the market are referred to as AAA titles. This refers to the cost required to make them, but it's often used to indicate the quality of a game title as well. Not every disc you pop in a drive can be God of War, though. Games that honestly give their all deserve at least a little respect; B for effort, as it were. Today I have impressions for two titles that favour style over substance and go down swinging, filling the screen with hundreds of NPCs for sheer shock value. Capcom's Dead Rising and the Dynasty Warriors wannabe Ninety-Nine Nights manage to both disappoint and satisfy. Like B-grade films, they're so bad that you just might love them. Read on for the Attack of the B-Grade Games!

There was a lot of buzz this weekend about the possibility that EA would be buying Crytek, the company currently working on the uber-shiny Crysis PC game. IGN checked in with the mammoth publisher and, at least according to EA, there are no plans for Crytek to join the EA family. Crytek did have some news to share at the Leipzig Games Convention, though: Crysis won't be on the next-gen consoles. It's just too intensive for even the likes of the 360 or PS3, apparently.

legoburner writes "The Enquirer is reporting that Capricorn have released a mini-itx based 1U-sized storage computer featuring four 750-GB hard drives and a 1-Ghz controller system with a typical power usage of an astounding 80 W per machine. A full 40U rack only uses 3.2 kW, which is less than 30 kW for an entire Petabyte!"

simoniker writes "Lots of people want to be game developers — but it's not as simple as it sounds, as the Game Career Guide website explains in a new feature on game schools. Game professor Peter Raad: 'The number of job seekers who are seriously pursuing this field is staggering. It used to be the case that studios had the liberty to take bright, fresh, new employees with no specific game education background and train them in the methods, tools, and style that are required to make games. This is no longer true.'"

bart_scriv writes "A new joint venture between Google and Ebay will expand the advertising reach of both companies and integrate free phone service with web ads. The partnership also puts rumors of a Yahoo/eBay merger to rest. From the article: 'A deal announced Aug. 28 by eBay and Google now appears to put the kibosh on the notion of an "ehoo" or "Ybay" to challenge Google. Instead, eBay signed up Google to provide Web search advertising outside the U.S. And the pair will cooperate on developing so-called click-to-call ads — which let potential buyers click on a link and talk directly to sellers or their call centers — throughout the world. Tests of the ads in the multiyear agreement will begin in early 2007, though neither side revealed specific terms.'"

Heartless Gamer writes "The PS3's performance has been downgraded again, according to the Inquirer." From the article: "We can't tell you why the GPU lost nearly 10% of it's clock, it could be an NVidia screwup, or it could be Sony/Cell. Either way, it just became much less of an overwhelming value, but you get a DRM infected drive for 'free' either way." Interesting, but keep in mind this is The Inquirer. 9 out of 10 doctors recommend salt with their articles. Relatedly, the choice comments from Penny Arcade this past weekend about Sony's console are wandering around the internets today. From that article: "We've already talked about it, there's no chance we're buying a PS3 at launch."

wild_berry writes "The BBC reports that Universal Music has signed a deal to make its music available for a free and legally-licensed download. Available from a new music site called SpiralFrog, the deal will allow users in the USA and Canada to listen to Universal's music, which Reuters' news site reveals is paid for by targeted advertising, but no details of possible community or playlist sharing features of the SpiralFrog service. Is the immunity from litigation enough to make up for having targeted advertising on each page and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?"