Stan's List

Universal Records has blasted YouTube for violations of copyright, stating that the site’s users often post material owned by Universal or other companies, The Mercury News reports.

Universal CEO Doug Morris made a barely-veiled threat to YouTube, telling investors, “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars…How we deal with these companies will be revealed shortly.” More …

The only graphics company to build third party graphics cards for the Mac, ATI Technologies, is being bought by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for $5.4 billion, according to CNet.

What will this mean for the Mac?

Blu-ray Disc (BD), one of two new HD video disc formats, will debut on June 20 when Sony releases eight titles plus a ninth on June 27 and seven more in July. Samsung’s BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc player is scheduled to hit the market on June 25 as the first such player on the U.S. market. Sony will also release a BD-compatible Vaio PC. Pioneer has already released a computer drive that will read the BD discs, the BDR-101A.

Blu-ray discs hold up to 25GB/50GB of data.

Apple Computer supports the BD format but has not yet announced any products using it–stay tuned. More …

Forbes.com is reporting the possibility of a merger between industry heavyweights AMD and ATI. This is largely based on a ‘prediction on recent checks in the PC food chain’ by industry analyst Apjit Walia. A move like this might give AMD some leverage over Intel, who has been slashing prices lately to compete with a major surge in AMD popularity in both the home and server markets. More …