The verdict is in: Telenor, Norway’s largest ISP, will not be legally obligated to block The Pirate Bay as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) had been hoping to compel via legal action.

A Norwegian district court ruled yesterday that Telenor is not facilitating copyright infringement when its users access The Pirate Bay; the court could find no legal grounds on which it could order the torrent website blocked on Telenor’s lines as a result.

The IFPI’s threat of legal action in March was dismissed by Telenor CEO Ragnar Kårhus saying, “[it] would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered.”

“Obviously we are pleased that the District Court has arrived at this conclusion. At the same time it is important for us to emphasize that this case is not about being in favor of or opposed to copyright, but about whether or not it is reasonable to saddle Internet service providers with a censorship role in respect of content on the Internet,” Kårhus said yesterday in the wake of the ruling.

With legal precedent established, the recording industry can no longer rely on the blacklist as a viable strategy in Norway. Though it is not yet clear if the IFPI will appeal the decision, it does seem likely.

During the company’s quarterly conference call, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang admitted to analysts that the company would not begin ramping shipments of their Fermi GPU until Q1 of the 2010 calendar year.

“Next year it is going to be an interesting first quarter because, in fact, we will need more wafers than ever in Q1. The reason for that is because–and I mean more 40nm wafers than ever in Q1–we are […] fully ramping Fermi for three different product lines: GeForce, Quadro and Tesla,” said Huang.

Huang’s Q1 statement refers to the company’s fiscal year which runs from January 26 until January 25 of the following year. NVIDIA’s schedule is approximately one year ahead of the calendar year, so the period of 26 January, 2010 until 26 April, 2010 represents the company’s first quarter in fiscal year 2011. This window also happens to be the same timeline we predicted on Wednesday for Fermi’s official debut.

The announcements came as part of an overall strong showing from NVIDIA in the company’s third quarter. The company posted a 16% increase in QOQ revenue to $903.2 million, while YOY standings rose slightly from $897.7 million at this time last year. Year over year, the company’s GAAP net income rose from $61.7 million to $107.6 million.

“We continued to make progress in the third quarter with healthy market demand across the board. Revenue was up from a year ago, with improvement in each of our PC, professional solutions and consumer businesses,” Huang said. “It’s great to see us shipping orders with our Tegra mobile-computing solution, and growing enthusiasm for our Tesla platform for parallel computing in the server and cloud-computing markets.”

Google has launched a new service dubbed Google Dashboard, no doubt intended to serve CEO Eric Schmidt’s promise of trying to avoid the “creepy line.”

The Google Blog says that the Dashboard is designed to provide users with “greater transparency and control over their own data.” The company is seeking to reward users who have placed a great deal of trust and data in Google’s hands over the years. The Dashboard gives users information from more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and more.

On October 26 Intel announced that it had begun offering a new firmware for their second-gen X25-M SSDs. The new firmware offered support for the SATA TRIM command, a feature in Windows 7 and Linux which helps SSDs maintain consistent performance over the long haul. Less than 24 hours later, however, and Intel pulled the firmware in response to a flood of reports claiming the upgrade process was responsible for bricked drives. Fast forward to today, and Intel has announced that it has replicated the issue and is working on a fix.

“Intel has replicated the issue on 34nm SSDs – X25-M – and is working on a fix,” said Alan Frost of Intel’s NAND Solutions Group.

“Intel is pursuing the resolution of this as a high priority. Intel is seeking direct feedback on this issue from members of the [Intel Support Community]… asking them to send their drives directly to Intel to expedite the analysis of the issues. This action will enable us to more quickly generate a resolution for this issue.”

Frost went on to imply that the firmware–version 02HA–was not to blame, but rather the v1.3 flashing tool.

It’s a well-known fact that Intel and NVIDIA are not the best of friends. Between icing their chipset biz and going to war in courts, Intel has spent the last two years showing NV the powder. Rather than take it lying down, ol’ green has fired back with a satire blog, of all things.

The blog has actually been up since late September; it claims to be a “a parody of events occurring within the semiconductor sector, with particular focus on its largest, and most-commented-upon competitor.” While most people would immediately think chief rival AMD, NVIDIA’s blind rage puts Intel on that podium instead.

Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, we couldn’t help but try our hand at it too.

Dell has just released information on their Adamo XPS, the super-thin third entry in the outfit’s Adamo lineup. Measuring just 9.7mm at its thinnest point, the XPS sure is slender. And with a weight of 1.4kg, it should also be fairly easy to carry around.

The Adamo XPS sports a 1.4GHz ULV Core 2 Duo processor, four gigabytes of memory, and a 128GB SSD. It also has a removable battery, two USB ports, integrated Bluetooth and 802.11n WiFi. The XPS, unsurprisingly, does not have an optical drive or an ethernet port.

The XPS will retail for $1800, and be available in North America by the holidays.

Following the release of the first DirectX 11 benchmark, NGOHQ is now offering a test to stress the DirectCompute capabilities of compatible GPUs.

The DirectCompute Benchmark v0.15 is used to evaluate GPGPU prowess by calculating FFT-like data and memory transfers. DirectX11 must be installed on the system, but DirectX 10, 10.1 and 11 adapters from both NVIDIA and AMD are supported with the test.

DirectX 11’s DirectCompute API is a standardized way to perform GPGPU acceleration, and every DirectX 11 GPU must run it. Microsoft’s decision to provide a common interface is finally the beginning of the “write once, run anywhere” era needed for the preeminence of GPU compute.

DirectX 11 GPUs will need just one body of code to perform stream processing tasks like physics and video encoding, and it won’t matter what GPU that code runs on.

Super Talent announced yesterday the world’s first flash drive designed to interface with the emerging USB SuperSpeed (USB 3.0) standard.

Dubbed the RAIDDrive, the lineup will include 32GB (STU32GSSK), 64GB (STU64GSSK) and 128GB (STU128GSSK) parts. The new devices turn out speeds between 200MB/s and 320MB/s, depending on the attachment method. The product is also backwards with prior USB standards per the official 3.0 spec.

Measuring 95 x 37 x13 mm, the SuperSpeed drive is a truly portable drive. Like most USB drives, it requires no separate cable. It plugs directly into any USB port. Although this drive will work in USB 2.0, it delivers transfer speeds up to 200MB/sec only in USB 3.0 ports. Using a separate UAS Protocol driver with a USB 3.0 port this SuperSpeed drive can reach up to 320MB/sec transfer speeds.

The product is scheduled for retail availability beginning in December.

The Klipsch ProMedia speaker sets have been a respected cornerstone in enthusiast audio for nearly a decade. In honor of the lineup’s impending 10-year anniversary, Klipsch has announced a new version which cuts the cords.

The original THX®-certified ProMedia 2.1 was introduced in 2000, and over the years it has become one of the highest praised, best-selling products Klipsch has ever produced. Therefore, Klipsch designed the ProMedia 2.1 Wireless to sound just like it.

With or without wires, the ProMedia remains the defacto 2.1 standard for computer speakers—it’s even been known to put some home theaters to shame.

So get ready to kiss lackluster performance goodbye because with the ProMedia 2.1 Wireless, you’ll be swept away by the sheer power, detail and emotion of your favorite music, movies and games. In fact, you won’t believe the performance of these wireless computer speakers until you experience them for yourself.

Ed note: Sites like Slashdot are pitching this FCC filing as fresh news, but it is not. Comcast transitioned to the following mechanism by December 31, 2008. We are covering it today for the sake of discussion, and to offer facts–not FUD–to the public about what the US’ largest ISPs are doing to manage their networks.

A 2008 filing by Comcast (PDF) with the US Federal Communications Commission sheds light on the company’s throttling practices. The filing came as a result of the FCC’s 2008 Internet Policy Statement (PDF) which obligates ISPs to be transparent about their network management practices.

The entire throttling mechanism is centered around the Cable Modem Termination System, or CMTS. Comcast’s network contains 3300 CMTS units in the US, each serving approximately 4400 customers.

The throttling process begins when a CMTS approaches a congested state described as greater than 15 minutes of  >70% upstream utilization or >80% downstream utilization. Comcast calls this a Near Congested State, or NCS.

(more…)

Samsung has announced today that the newest Semiconductor R&D Center has begun work on next-gen logic and memory technologies.

The new facility is a part of the company’s Foundry research program, and it’s devoted to high-K, 3D gates, EUV lithography, and sub-28nm interconnect/packaging processes.

“High-performance and low power are no longer mutually exclusive,” said Kinam Kim, EVP and GM of Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor R&D Center.

“There is critical R&D work to be done at the most advanced process nodes with regards to minimising power consumption while incorporating a feature rich menu of devices for designers to create innovative next-generation mobile and high performance SoC devices.”

Developments produced at the facility will not only benefit Samsung, but partners like the IBM Technology Alliance, IMEC, Sematech, and other fabless IP firms.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday filed an antitrust suit (PDF) against Intel in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.

The suit alleges that Intel Corporation willingly compelled or participated in several market actions design to block or impede market actions from rival firm AMD.

“Intel has engaged in a systematic worldwide campaign of illegal, exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly power and prices in the market for x86 microprocessors, the ‘brains’ of Personal Computers (’PCs’),” the filing reads.

“By exacting exclusive or near-exclusive agreements from large computer makers (’Original Equipment Manufacturers’ or ‘OEMs’) in exchange for payments totaling billions of dollars, and threatening retaliation against any company that did not heed its wishes, Intel robbed its competitors of the opportunity to challenge Intel’s dominance in key segments of the market. This illegal behavior was highly detrimental to consumers, competition, and innovation.”

The Delaware filing is very similar to that of the European Commission’s which ruled against Intel in May with a penalty of €1.07 billion.

The ongoing EC case alleges that Intel leveraged its significant financial capabilities to persuade customers into delaying or aborting AMD-powered plans in favor of products with Intel chips. The charges include paying at least one retailer to stock only Intel parts, and offering several secret rebates to make Intel processors the only economical choice.

The New York suit has requested a trial by jury, and asks for compensatory damages on five claims both civil and criminal.