bigtallmofo writes "With over four million subscribers, Netflix was an obvious target for rival Blockbuster. In 2005, target them they did. Introducing their own DVD-by-mail service and (for a while) undercutting Netflix's price point, Blockbuster went for the jugular. A year later Netflix shows a market value of $1.5 billion with no debt compared to Blockbuster's $684 million worth with $1.0 billion in debt. Is there still a DVD-by-mail war or has Netflix won?"

larry bagina writes "New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has subpoenaed Warner Music Group, apparently looking into allegations of price fixing with Sony/BMG, EMI, and Vivendi, and apparently more subpoenas are in the pipeline. 'As part of an industrywide investigation concerning pricing of digital music downloads, we received a subpoena from Atty. Gen. Spitzer's office as disclosed in our public filings. We are cooperating fully with the inquiry.'"

jomammy writes "According to a recent Wired article, the majority of Americans are becoming increasingly dependant on their gadgets. High speed internet seems to be the one most determined to be a 'necessity'. A third of the country is said to pay more than $200.00 a month for their addiction, where 4 out of 10 pay between $100.00 and $150.00 a month. Other items in this list of 'gadgets' include, mp3 players, dvd players, laptops, handhelds, etc." How addicted are we? How addicted are you?

FullMetalAlchemist writes "After six release candidates, the NetBSD project has finally released a gold version of a major mile stone; v3.0. I'm looking forward to this release a good deal. If I wanted to, I could build our entire office infrastructure on it thanks to Xen. Major Changes can be found on the NetBSD website, and there are several ways to get the release. Get downloading!"

AlexDV asks: "I'm currently a second-term, CIS major at DeVry University. This coming term, I will have the choice of studying either Java or C# for my Object Oriented Programming class. Now I'm a diehard Linux user, so I'm slightly conflicted here. Which should I take?"

Next Generation has an exerpt from the book Smartbomb, discussing how it was that Microsoft came to enter the console market. From the article: "Two years before the Xbox's launch, Bill Gates and his top executives retreated to Puget Sound to discuss Microsoft's business model. A seismic shift was under way. The late nineties was a time of a burgeoning new consensus among media pundits and high-tech industry folks that the consumer world would turn its eye from desktop computers toward 'information appliances.'"

We've had several submissions this morning concerning a CoolTechZone article stating that Microsoft has purchased Opera, seemingly confirming the Dvorak article we reported on yesterday. However, roblimo has followed up with Opera and found that to be (so far), less than true. Opera PR person Berit Hanson told Slashdot by phone from Oslo, Norway, that "last week it was Google, this week it's Microsoft." She laughed and added, "If I was working for Microsoft I think I'd know it, but I'm still in Oslo, not Washington, still working for Opera." Which, of course, is not to say it won't happen ... it just hasn't happened yet.

revividus writes "It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation."

patro writes "Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Dvorak thinks buying Opera would be a smarter move. It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore and $400 million for it is pocket money for Microsoft."