Tuoqui writes "With all the focus on the infamous hexadecimal number, people may be ignoring a bigger weakness in the AACS armor, which emerged two weeks ago. Some hackers have figured out how to crack AACS in a way that cannot be defeated, even by revoking all the keys in circulation."

An anonymous reader writes "Slashdot has already reported on the go-go sales for the 'Casino Royale' Blu-ray on Amazon, but now comes news that the same Blu-ray disc is the first high-def disc to ship 100,000 units within the United States. It took standard-def DVD eleven months to reach that retail milestone (in 1998 with 'Air Force One'), but with 'Royale,' the nine-month old Blu-ray format now has done it two months faster."

erikvlie writes "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarized the most important findings."

gEvil (beta) writes "According to an article at BoingBoing, the processing keys for the AACS encryption scheme used by both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray video discs have been extracted, and a crack has been released. What this means is that there is now a method to extract the copy-protected content of any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc out there. This is different from Muslix64's previous crack, which only extracted the volume key for each disc. This new method bypasses this step and allows anyone to extract the data without first requiring the volume key."

An anonymous reader writes to mention that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Lockheed Martin recently reported success in the test flight of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system. "THAAD is designed to defend U.S. troops, allied forces, population centers and critical infrastructure against short- to intermediate range ballistic missiles. THAAD comprises a fire control and communications system, interceptors, launchers and a radar. The THAAD interceptor uses hit-to-kill technology to destroy targets, and is the only weapon system that engages threat ballistic missiles at both endo- and exo-atmospheric altitudes."

kapaopango writes "Ars Technica is reporting that upgrade versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Premium, and Starter Edition cannot be installed on a PC unless Windows XP or Windows 2000 is already installed. This is a change from previous versions of Windows, which only required a valid license key. This change has the potential to make disaster recovery very tedious. The article says: 'For its part, Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista repair process should be sufficient to solve any problems with the OS, since otherwise the only option for disaster recovery in the absence of backups would be to wipe a machine, install XP, and then upgrade to Vista. This will certainly make disaster recovery a more irritating experience.'"

woof69 writes "After dropping OS X support for Premiere some time in 2003, Adobe is bringing it back in the new Adobe Production Studio. The new software includes After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Encore DVD, and Soundbooth, and will be available for Apple's Intel-based computers in mid-2007; an updated version of the Windows suite will ship at the same time. Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?"

Rovi writes "Lenovo had a gift for Thinkpad fans this season- they finally released the successor to the X41 Tablet. The Thinkpad X60 Tablet weighs in at about three and a half pounds and has great tablet functionality. The updates from the older model include a 2.5" hard drive (the X41 used a 1.8"), automatic screen orientation, and an Intel Core Duo processor. For performance seekers some serious upgrades are available, such as a 120GB 5400RPM hard drive, 100GB 7200RPM drive, SXGA+ monitor, or up to 4GB of RAM."

DonaldP asks: "Have any of you successfully deployed a key, token, or biometric-based access control for Windows machines to replace (or enhance) the typical login/logout authentication process (even image-recognition schemes would be considered)? I see different stuff out there but short of actually evaluating each one, it's hard to get a good idea of what the scene is like, what is crap and what actually delivers. Does anyone have experience with such systems, or can suggest other suitable solutions?"

An anonymous reader writes "Peter Jenner, former manager of bands like Pink Floyd, T.Rex and the Clash, states in an interview with the Register that music label executives have lost faith in DRM and dollar-per-track online music selling isn't working too well as a model. He predicts that in two to three years time, many countries will have moved to a blanket licensing regime." The article goes on at some length, talking about the value of digital music, patterns in the music industry, and some business at the end about 'the tyranny of the playlist' that I'm not hep enough to follow. I'm not sure this rant has any connection whatsoever with reality, but it is something to think about.

Trent Lucier writes "Google depends on new content constantly being added to the web. No Google initiative has done a better job at encouraging new content than the AdSense/AdWords programs. Google Advertising Tools by Harold Davis is a book that teaches you to use these tools effectively." Read the rest of Trent's review.

morcego asks: "As we are all too much aware, spam is an increasing problem. Each of us has our own set of tools and methods to try and reduce the amount of spam we receive, each with different pros and cons. Also, on a more broad front, we have options like SPF (+ SRS), Microsoft's own Caller-ID, and Yahoo's DomainKeys that we can use. These days, it is incredibly easy to implement any (or all of these), using publicly available frameworks and libraries (libspf2, and milter, to name a few). I have been using SPF for quite some time now with some measurable results, although nothing earth shattering. Which of these are you using, if any? Why, or why not? Do you think any of them really contribute anything to fight spam?"

If you're on pins and needles looking forward to November 17th, you'll be very interested to know that Kotaku has a list of Best Buy stories opening at Midnight on PS3 launch day. The list of 18 stores allowed to open at the very start of the day comes from what is apparently an internal memo. The other stores are slated to open at 8am, assuming there are no restrictions on the time they can open (if they're in a mall, for example). As a refresher for launch day fans, make sure and check out the list of launch window titles, and the accessories price list.

An anonymous reader writes, "Interesting speculation on the 'GooTube' deal, oozing with corporate intrigue. Based on Mark Cuban's blog and a subsequent ZDNet blog posting, it seems as though there might have been some dodgy goings-on just prior to the deal. In short, YouTube may have handed the major labels approximately $50M so that the labels would turn a blind eye to the copyright infringements AND go after the competition to cement YouTube's position in the market. Universal started the ball rolling a week after the deal by suing Bolt and Grouper." Cuban's blog does not identify the author of the speculation, who calls himself "an experienced veteran in the digital media business." Cuban writes that this is someone he "respects and trusts."

Eurogamer has a short rundown on some Halo 3 details which have emerged from the Swedish games mag LEVEL. There are a few details on weapons, levels, combat mechanics, and a super-special helmet edition for the game. From the article: "Finally, there's news on the contents of the Halo 3 'Legendary Edition', which will consist of four DVDs' worth of content and, amusingly, a replica Spartan helmet. So what's on those four discs? Well, the game, obviously, and then documentaries and developer commentaries, bonus material like Red vs. Blue episodes, and cut-scenes from Halo 1 to 3 in high-definition. There will also be some sort of Halo film trailer located in the package." 1up has announced they're going to have a bevy of features on the game tying in to the new issue of EGM, so more details should be available online soon.