Despite the enormity of its recurring scandals, Samsung is unlikely to go the way of Enron, in part because of its economic importance to South Korea.

Filed under: Desktops

Trust us, we've seen a smorgasbord of smallish PCs designed to reside in places humans aren't fond of visiting, and ICI Controls is making no bones about the ruggedness of its latest alternative. The fanless SC240M is a relatively small, completely sealed PC designed for "embedded and industrial applications in wet and dirty environments." Packed within the rough and tough exterior is a 1.2GHz VIA, 1.6GHz Pentium M or 1.6GHz / 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, up to 2GB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, WiFi and a slew of ports including Ethernet, four USB 2.0 sockets, audio in / out, RS-232, FireWire and S-Video. Notably, users can customize the innards to their heart's content, but the basic configurations start at $1,695, and you can even add in a backlit sealed keyboard for just $250 more. You know, for your upcoming stay in an underwater hotel, or whatever.

[Via LinuxDevices]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Although FiOS just celebrated its second birthday last month, the third year isn't exactly off to a sensational start. Reportedly, Digital Art Services, a New York-based advertising company, has slapped Verizon Communications with a lawsuit alleging that the firm "overstated subscribers to its fiber-optic service and charged inflated prices for advertisements there." Essentially, the plaintiff is suggesting that Verizon included "pending customers" in its public subscriber reports which were "false and inflated." Interestingly, a spokesperson for Verizon stated that while he had yet to see the lawsuit, it sounded like a "garden variety business dispute." Of note, Digital Art was informed that pending customers could be included "as they were usually converted to active subscribers within two weeks," but it found that many prospective buyers "waited up to 10 months for their service to become active."

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

By completely overhauling its line of iPods, Apple cements its lock on the portable-media-player market. Analysts say no one else is close in combining features with aggressive prices.

Investigators must have a court's approval before they can order internet providers to turn over records without telling customers, according to U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero. The recently rewritten Patriot Act "offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers," the judge rules.

HTC celebrated its 10th anniversary on Thursday with a rare compliment from Apple, which used the same name as an HTC smartphone on the iPod touch.