SchlimpyChicken writes "Lexicon and THX apparently attempted to pull a fast one on the consumer electronics industry, but got caught this week when a couple websites exposed the fact that the high-end electronics company put a nearly-unmodified $500 Oppo Blu-ray player into a new Lexicon chassis and was selling it for $3500. AV Rant broke the story first on its home theater podcast with some pics of the two players' internals. Audioholics.com then posted a full suite of pics and tested the players with an Audio Precision analyzer. Both showed identical analogue audio performance and both failed a couple of basic THX specifications. Audioholics also posted commentary from THX on the matter and noted that both companies appear to be in a mad scramble to hide the fact that the player was ever deemed THX certified."

angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."

itwbennett writes "The IE attack code used in last month's attack on Google and 33 other companies was submitted for analysis Thursday on the Wepawet malware analysis Web site. One day after being made publicly available, it had been included in at least one hacking tool and could be seen in online attacks, according to Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications at McAfee. Marcus noted that the attack is very reliable on IE 6 running on Windows XP, and could possibly be modified to work on newer versions of IE."

Unequivocal writes "Chalk another one up to Jules Verne. Physicist John Hunter is proposing a space cannon with a new design idea: it's mostly submerged. 'Many engineers have toyed with the [space cannon] concept, but nobody has came up with an actual project that may work. Hunter's idea is simple: Build a cannon near the equator, submerged in the ocean, hooked to a floating rig ... A system like this will cut launch costs from $5,000 per pound to only $250 per pound. It won't launch people into space because of the excessive acceleration, but those guys at the ISS can use it to order pizza and real ice cream.' Though it won't work on people, with launch costs that low, who cares?"

Early last week several questions were submitted to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern about the sad state of counter-terrorism in the United States, and he has answered frankly and in-depth. In addition, McGovern solicited former FBI attorney/special agent Coleen Rowley to review his answers and provide her own comments. Ray's biggest tip to the intelligence community was to "HOLD ACCOUNTABLE THOSE RESPONSIBLE. More 'reform' is the last thing we need. Sorry, but we DO have to look back. The most effective step would be to release the CIA Inspector General report on intelligence community performance prior to 9/11. That investigation was run by, and its report was prepared by an honest man, it turns out. It was immediately suppressed by then-Acting DCI John McLaughlin — another Tenet clone — and McLaughin's successors as director, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and now Leon Panetta."