WD Announces Q4 Revenue of $1.9B

Western Digital Corp. today reported financial results for its fiscal year 2009 and fourth quarter ended July 3, 2009. For fiscal year 2009, the company posted revenue of $7.5 billion, net income of $470 million, or $2.08 per share, compared to $8.1 billion in revenue, and net income of $867 million, or $3.84 per share for the prior year. The 2009 net income amount included a $14 million in-process research and development charge related to the acquisition of SiliconSystems Inc., $112 million of restructuring charges, an $18 million gain on the sale of assets from the company's media substrate manufacturing facility in Sarawak, Malaysia and $4 million of tax benefits associated with the restructuring charges. Excluding these amounts, the 2009 non-GAAP net income was $574 million, or $2.54 per share. The 2008 net income amount included net charges of $60 million for taxes related to the license of intellectual property to subsidiaries and $49 million for acquired in-process research and development related to the acquisition of Komag Inc. Excluding these amounts, 2008 non-GAAP net income was $976 million, or $4.32 per share.

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Sony Quarterly Loss $391M, Expects More Red Ink

The good news is that Sony posted "better than expected" first quarter results. The bad news is that those "better than expected" results turned out to be a $391 million loss.

Sony said Thursday its net loss for the fiscal first quarter was 37.1 billion yen ($391 million) compared with a 35 billion yen ($368 million) profit in the April-June period a year earlier. Quarterly sales dropped 19.2 percent to 1.56 trillion yen ($16.4 billion).

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How To Hijack 'Every iPhone In The World'

Researchers plan on revealing details of an iPhone bug later today that allows hacker to take total control of your phone as well as every phone in your contact list. According to the researchers, Apple was notified more than a month ago of the flaw and, at this point, has done nothing to fix it.

Using a flaw they've found in the iPhone's handling of text messages, the researchers say they'll demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone's functions. That includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device's camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking.

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Intel Says New Atom Chip Not Delayed

If you have ever wondered why we say "according to" or "citing anonymous sources" when referring to unsubstantiated news stories, this is why.

Reports surfaced this week that Intel's next-generation "Pine Trail" Atom silicon would be delayed. Speaking at the Intel Technology Summit on Wednesday in San Francisco, Mooly Eden, general manager of the Mobile Platforms Group at Intel, said the Netbook silicon is not delayed. "Pine Trail is on schedule," Eden said.

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AAEON Dual-Channel Display ETX Powered by VIA

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the adoption of its VIA C7 and VIA Eden processors in the latest ETX board from AAEON Technology Inc. Designed for niche applications that require high-resolution, dual-channel display support, the ETX-CX700M board is highly suited to a range of modern multimedia-rich electronic gaming and entertainment systems. The ETX-CX700M combines a VIA processor with the VIA CX700M system media processor, providing a range of expansion and storage options and 24-bit dual channel configurations of LVDS, CRT, DVI and TV outputs.

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Intel Capital Announces Five Cleantech Investments

Today at the Technology Innovation Summit, Intel Capital, Intel Corporation's global investment organization, reaffirmed its dedication to foster clean technology innovation with the announcement of five cleantech investments. The deals, which total approximately $10 million and span two continents, include first-time investment in U.S.-based CPower (demand response and energy efficiency) as well as follow-on investments in Ireland-based Powervation (digital power control) and U.S.-based companies Convey Computer (energy efficient high performance computing), Grid Net (smart meter infrastructure) and iControl (home automation and monitoring).

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Perez Resigns From NVIDIA After 11 Years

Charlie Demerjian over at Semi Accurate says that he has confirmation that Derek Perez has resigned from NVIDIA. Perez was Director of Public Relations for 11 years.

In any case, word has it that this is not a pleasant parting, although it will be spun as such. When we first heard about it weeks ago, it was slated for the end of the month or so. Given Nvidia's 'execution' of late, this might be delayed for several quarters.

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iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cell Phone Towers

I thought I was done posting Apple stuff today (I really do try to limit myself) but when the company makes claims like this, you just can’t pass them up. Thanks to everyone that submitted this one.

The nation’s cellphone networks could suffer "potentially catastrophic" cyberattacks by iPhone-wielding hackers at home and abroad if iPhone owners are permitted to legally jailbreak their shiny wireless devices — that’s what Apple claims.

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Greenpeace Vandalizes HP Corporate HQ

And people wonder why no one likes groups like Greenpeace, Peta and all the other ones…it’s lame stunts like this that turn people off.

After repeatedly calling out HP for using PVC and hazardous chemicals in its devices, the group has taken matters into its own hands -- specifically, by slipping into the company's Palo Alto headquarters and painting "hazardous products" on the roof, in really big letters, with non-toxic children's paint.

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IBM Delivers Enhanced Disaster Recovery Capabilities

IBM today announced a major enhancement to its industry leading data deduplication solution that offers dramatic business continuity improvements, allowing organizations to quickly recover and become operational faster in the event of a disaster. IBM is adding electronic data transfer capabilities, or native replication, to the ProtecTIER Deduplication product line, providing organizations with improved data protection and business continuity by electronically transmitting deduplicated data to remote sites, dramatically reducing bandwidth requirements, and eliminating the need to physically transport tapes to a remote site.

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Apple's Approval Process Has Gone Too Far

Apple’s approval process has gone too far and Gizmodo ain’t gonna take it. Oh no, they ain’t gonna take it. They’re not going to take it, anymore. The App store is so condescending. Their gall is never ending and you wont get nothing, not a thing from them. Dee Snider approves of this message.

The App Store approval process has always been mysterious, slightly ridiculous and mildly infuriating. But with the summary execution of Google Latitude as well as every Google Voice app, it's finally gone too far.

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Congress: File Sharing Leaks Sensitive Data

The title "file sharing leaks sensitive data" is a bit on the misleading side. After all, it is the idiotic government employees that install P2P software on their work computers that leaks the information. Not the other way around.

Sensitive files like Secret Service safehouse locations, military rosters, and IRS tax returns can still be found on file-sharing networks, according to a report to a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Wednesday.

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