The University of Berlin, with partners Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Universita Politecnica delle Marche in Italy, has managed to work out how to store 500GB of data on a regular HD DVD or Blu-ray disc.

The Microholas project developed a microholographic recording technique, using nanostructures inside the disk rather than on the surface as in conventional optical storage systems.

By applying wavelength multiplexing techniques to multi-layer disc structures, very high storage densities can be achieved, Professor Susanna Orlic told German site Pressetext. The 500GB prototype has 50 data-storage layers.

Orl said the technology has the potential to store one terabyte (1TB) of data.

Most of these cartridges are made by printer manufacturers and sell for a substantial premium. Some come from unauthorized sources, sell for substantially less and attract the attention of antipiracy lawyers.

Cryptography Research Inc. (CRI), a San Francisco company, is developing chip technology aimed at helping printer manufacturers protect this primary source of profit. The company's chips use cryptography designed to make it harder for printers to use off-brand and counterfeit cartridges.

Skillful hackers can eventually crack almost any code thrown at them and then exploit it for commercial purposes. Once antipiracy encryption is hacked on a product such as high-definition DVDs, for example, it's cracked forever and the discs can be copied and played using the hack.

In terms of making and selling hardware, printers themselves are one of the least profitable sectors. Often the manufacturers are willing to sell their printers at a loss with the goal of making money on sales of ink.

Only a couple of days after being shipped, the Apple TV is already being modified in a variety of ways. A thread at Something Awful discusses installing VLC, and a dedicated site, AppleTVHacks.net, has appeared and is cataloging hacks including a hard-drive upgrade tutorial. Did Apple intend for the Apple TV to be so easy to upgrade and hack?

A firm has developed technology which can cool computer chips with an Ionic wind.

Kronos uses an ionic wind pump to create a corona discharge which draws air across the chip.

With a bit of cash from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington and Intel, it created several working prototypes of a corona discharge CPU cooler, which can silently but effectively cool a modern CPU.

Corona-based coolers have no moving parts and are more reliable. They could cool down the most demanding processors without making a sound. They also do not need much power to do the job either, Kronos claims.

Researchers are reporting significant progress in perfecting a different way to store data in semiconductors, which could replace one widely used type of memory chip and possibly become a credible competitor to disk drives. The researchers, in a paper being delivered at a technical conference in San Francisco, say they used a novel combination of materials to create prototype phase-change components that are more than 500 times as fast as flash chips, while requiring less than half of the electrical power to record data.

An Inquirer reader attending a conference in Japan was sat just feet away from a laptop computer that suddenly exploded into flames, in what could have been a deadly accident.

Guilhem, our astonished reader reports: "The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes".

"For the record, this is a Dell machine," notes Guilhem. "It is only a matter of time until such an incident breaks out on a plane," he suggests.

We don't have any further details of the model of the computer in question. In light of the evidence, however, we'd suggest you avoid actually using a laptop on your lap. Ouch.

Big oil company Shell suspended chip-and-pin payments at 600 petrol stations in the UK after it discovered that customers' accounts had leaked around £1 million.

According to our source, a team of shysters has been turning up at petrol stations posing as engineers and taking the Trintech Smart5000 Chip and Pin units away for repair. They have then bypassed the anti-tamper mechanisms and inserted their own card skimmer.

The hoods then return the unit, again posing as an engineer. Once the units begin collecting card details these are sent abroad and used to withdraw cash.

To get around the anti-tamper mechanisms, the fraudsters might have had access to a reset program that would allow them to reset the alarm or they were able to engineer their way round it by using different parts from previous versions of the Smart5000 unit. "Either way," said our mole, "they were very clever."

Is selling PCs without an OS installed a bad idea for retailers? Microsoft thinks so. In an article in Microsoft's Partner Update magazine, Microsoft's anti-piracy head Michala Alexander advises retailers to avoid selling "naked" PCs, saying that doing so puts the vendors at risk.

Microsoft will be backing up their admonitions against selling naked PCs with "feet on the street" personnel who will visit retailers and provide them with sales and other assistance. Chances are, they will also be looking to make sure everything is in order in terms of Windows licenses.

Systems with Windows preinstalled can be a source of frustration for shoppers. Even if you're only after the hardware and your plans for a shiny new PC don't involve Windows at all, you're still stuck paying for an operating system you don't want.

Microsoft denies that is the case, saying that the company is simply trying to assist its customers while admitting that the software giant would be keeping an eye on naked systems sales and piracy rates.

At last, you don't need to mess around with Dremel tools and Lexan (and destroy your valuable data) to get a clear window in your hard drive. Western Digital has released the Raptor X 150GB SATA hard drive. 10,000 RPM, 4.6ms seek time, 16MB buffer, and, yes, a clear window so you can see what's going on inside. Made out of a special polycarbonate lens with an ESD-dissipative coating, the lens is designed to let case modders and their groupies see the drive platters and heads without sacrificing data integrity.

Maxell will ship its first holographic storage system late next year, the company has pledged.

The storage specialist will initially offer a removable system based on 300GB media and capable of transfering data at a rate of 20MBps, Maxell said. However, the company said the technology, designed by InPhase Technologies, is capable of achieving 1.6TB per disk - and that's uncompressed capacity - with a 120MBps bandwidth.

InPhase was founded in December 2000 by Lucent, and has been working on holographic storage - in which data is encoded as a 3D pattern written and read by laser beam - ever since. In addition to the colossal storage capacity, InPhase promises a data archive life of over 50 years, not much different to the longevity claimed by most optical media makers - a CD-RW for instance will typically retain data for 20-100 years, depending on which manufacturer you speak to.