MTV, RealNetworks to merge music stores ... Skype details 'perfect storm' outage ... Google offers refunds for irked video customers

HIGHLIGHTS
News: MTV, RealNetworks said to merge digital music stores
News: Skype offers more details of 'perfect storm' outage
News: Google offers refunds for irked video customers
News: Toshiba to offer 320GB laptop drive from Q4
News: Adobe releases Moviestar beta for Flash Player 9
Unix Tip: Viewing device aliases on the command line
ITwhirled: Scientists: Movies raising a nation of science morons


NEWS UPDATES

MTV, RealNetworks said to merge digital music stores
MTV Networks and RealNetworks Inc. will merge their online digital music stores in the latest attempt to reduce Apple Inc.'s hold on the music download market, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday morning.

Skype offers more details of 'perfect storm' outage
The situation that prevented millions of people from accessing Skype Ltd.'s Internet telephony service late last week was a "perfect storm" and should not reoccur, the company said Tuesday.

Google offers refunds for irked video customers
Google Inc. has apologized for the way it shut down its video sales and rental service last week, leaving people unable to play videos they had paid for, and said it will refund their credit cards and allow them to watch their films for another six months.

Toshiba to offer 320GB laptop drive from Q4
Toshiba Corp. will start producing a 320G-byte hard-disk drive for laptop computers before the end of this year, the company said Tuesday.

Adobe releases Moviestar beta for Flash Player 9
Adobe Systems Inc.'s upgrade for its Flash Player, released on Tuesday, adds support for one of the latest video encoding standards as well as new audio support.

Tech's own data centers are their green showrooms
Two Silicon Valley companies are showcasing technology in their own facilities to demonstrate how energy-efficiency can help companies act green and save green.

Dell to offer networked SCSI array
Dell is set to launch its first networked serial-attached SCSI (SAS) drive array. It will offer up to 6TB of capacity to small and medium enterprise customers and be a SAS alternative to its EMC-supplied AX150i.

VOICECON: Microsoft, others scramble for spotlight
Microsoft Corp. has licensed its RT Audio Codec for IP (Internet Protocol) voice calls to major hardware vendors including Intel Corp., Texas Instruments Inc. and Polycom Inc., the company is set to announce Tuesday at the VoiceCon conference. It joins several vendors using the event as a showcase for IP telephony advancements.

New tool turns users into SOA programmers
Serena has said it will jump into the software-as-a-service (SAAS) market next month with a user-oriented development toolset aimed at promoting the idea of "enterprise mashups."


UNIX TIP

Viewing device aliases on the command line
By Sandra Henry Stocker

Ever wish you could take a look at the device aliases on a Solaris system without having to descend all the way down to the ok prompt? Well, you can. By issuing the proper version of the prtconf (print system configuration) command, you can include a list of device aliases in your prtconf output.

Read the full article here.



ITWHIRLED

Scientists: Movies raising a nation of science morons
Two physicists who teach undergraduates in Florida are concerned that implausible physics in sci-fi and action movies are giving young people entirely incorrect ideas about how the physical world works. Thus, they're fighting fire with fire, teaching a class that uses these same movies to illustrate good and bad science.

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