An anonymous reader writes "TG Daily has an interesting write-up on AMD's big Q1 loss and how the company plans to get back into the black. AMD admitted that Q1 was a meltdown and not just a miss. Looks like cost cutting, including layoffs, may be on the way. But the company says it won't change its overal direction. The CEO Hector Ruiz is quoted as saying, 'We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Via is readying a media-oriented motherboard in what could be the next popular size for small form-factor PCs: Pico-ITX. The 'Epia PX' board measures 3.9 x 2.8 inches and features a 1GHz C7 processor, along with rich audio/video I/O, albeit mostly on pin headers. Pico-ITX measures 3.9 x 2.8 inches (10 x 7.2 cm) — exactly half the surface area of Via's already small 4.7 x 4.7-inch (12 x 12cm) Nano-ITX standard, and considerably smaller than the original 6.7-inch square (17 x 17cm) mini-ITX standard."

haddieman notes that while many people are getting more and more annoyed at DRM, Norway actually did something about it. The PC World article explains: "Good intentions, questionable execution. European legislators have been giving DRM considerable attention for a while, but Norway has actually gone so far as to declare that Apple's iTunes store is illegal under Norwegian law. The crux of the issue is that the Fairplay DRM that is at the heart of the iTunes/iPod universe doesn't work with anything else, meaning that if you want access to the cast iTunes library, you have to buy an iPod."

JasonK writes "Here's a type of Google launch you don't see every day: Testing on the Toilet. This is a service that has been apparently been running internally for several months and teaching developers about testing during their 'down time,' so to speak. Due to the wild success of the program inside of Google, they decided to start a blog where they will post these weekly episodes so that the rest of us can print them out and have our own reading on the can. Is this a step towards Google becoming more open about their development practices?"

ThinSkin writes "Roughly 18 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past, according to a telephone and online study of 2,600 Americans. A typical movie downloader is 29 years of age, while 63 percent of all downloaders are male, and 37 percent are female. Kaan Yigit, director of the study, observes, 'There is a Robin Hood effect — most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don't think of movie downloading as a big deal. The current crop of 'download to own' movie services and the new ones coming into the market will need to offer greater flexibility of use, selection and low prices to convert the current users to their services — otherwise file-sharing will continue to thrive.'"

Billosaur writes "Nature.com is reporting that the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which includes the companies that publish scientific journals, is becoming concerned with the free-information movement. A meeting was arranged with PR professional Eric Dezenhall to discuss the problem. Dezenhall's firm has worked with the likes of ExxonMobil 'to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace', among other campaigns. The publishers are worried that the free exchange of scientific information may be bad for the bottom line, as it might cause the money from subscriptions to their journals to dry up. Among the recommendations: 'The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles.' The AAP is trying to counter messages from groups such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), an open-access publisher and prominent advocate of free access to information, or the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central."

XenoPhage writes "Yet again, Diebold has shown their security prowess. This time they posted, on their website, a picture of the actual key used to open all of their Diebold voting machines. Ross Kinard of Sploitcast crafted three keys based on this photo. Amazingly enough, two of the three keys successfully opened one of the voting machines. But fear not, Diebold has removed the offending picture, replacing it with a picture of their digital card key. Take that, hackers!"

Bangor writes "Google is planning to turn Google Video into a search index of all the world's available video online. The change will see YouTube becoming Google's only platform for user-generated video and premium content sales, and Google said that YouTube content would be immediately added to the Google Video search index. The company plans to expand that to eventually include all video online. From the article: 'The company said that they 'envision most user-generated and premium video content being hosted on YouTube,' which clearly suggests that the Google Video storefront will eventually give way to YouTube.'"

Via the ever-excellent Game|Life, a post on Games Radar that details seven destroyed game franchises, taken from us in their prime by callous game publishers. Running the gamut from the venerable Sonic (of whose decline we've already spoken) to the good-to-crappy-in-two-years Viewtiful Joe, these are all games that just deserved better. I personally lament the decline of the Tomb Raider series (number 7 on the list) the most. Her most recent outing was much better than previous iterations, and I definitely hope that Eidos can keep up the momentum. Are there any series that you feel have fallen from heights that should have made the list?