Widespread availability of AMD’s energy-efficient Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processor a.k.a. Barcelona for computer servers has been delayed yet again because of a technical glitch.

Barcelona has been in limited availability since September this year.

Because of the glitch, widespread availability of the Barcelona chip has now been pushed back to early next year. The chip was originally scheduled to move into general availability in mid-2007.

Barcelona took over three years to develop and is the first native x86 quad-core processor on a single piece of silicon.

Intel, which already offers the quad-core Xeon processors, took a different and easier route with its quad-core processors by packaging together two dual-core processors.

For movie buffs living in the U.S.,  Netflix is an excellent source of both Bollywood and Hollywood movies.

You pick your movies online on the Netflix web site and the DVDs come to you via mail in a day or two. Postage both ways is included in the subscription.

Here are some interesting Netflix statistics: 

No of DVDs   - 55 million
DVDs Shipped Every Day - 1.6 million
No of Titles   - 90,000
No of Subscribers - 7 million
No of Subscription plans - 9
No of Shipping Points - 100 
No of Movie Ratings - 2 Billion

Besides a wide choice of Hindi movies, Netflix has some Tamil movies as well.

Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP leader Narendra Modi has received a notice from India’s Election Commission for his inflamatory campaign speech on December 4 in Mangrol that justified the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in an Indian-style encounter with the police.

The Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case is now before India’s Supreme Court.

In a notice to Modi asking him to submit his reply by Saturday, the Election Commission of India said:

The Commission has considered the various inputs and the complaint, and has viewed the video recording of the said speech referred to above. The Commission, prima facie, is of the view that the references to Late Shri Sohrabuddin and linking his name to terrorism, made in the speech, amounts to indulging in activity which may aggravate existing differences, creating mutual hatred and causing tension between different communities, and would involve violation of the provision of clause (1) and (3) of Item I of the Model Code of Conduct.

Citing the the Model Code of Conduct, the Election Commission said in its notice to Modi:

No party or candidate shall indulge in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic.

There shall be no appeal to caste or communal feelings for securing votes. Mosques, Churches, Temples or other places of worship shall not be used as forum for election propaganda.

The Election Commission said that a complaint had also been filed by Teesta Setalvad alleging that Modi’s speech amounted to an open exhortation of violence and misuse of religion for political ends and a violation of the Model Code of Conduct.

TV rating firm Nielsen is jumping on the anti-piracy bandwagon with a new service called Digital Media Manager.

Expected to launch in mid-2008, Digital Media Manager will let video content owners monitor and manage distribution of their media content online.

Digital Media Manager will use digital watermarking and fingerprinting to ensure copyright security and compliance.

Nielsen is working with Digimarc to roll out the new service.

TV and movie studios have been shouting themselves hoarse over the rampant piracy of their content on online services such as YouTube.

Like other content owners, Bollywood producers have been badly hit by rampant online and offline piracy.

Within days - and sometimes within hours - of a Bollywood movie’s release, users upload songs and occasionally whole movies to online video sites like YouTube. Latest Bollywood movies are also sold and rented out in Indian grocery stores in the U.S. within days of their release.

In subsequent phases, Nielsen wants to digitally watermark DVDs, movies, music, video games and other content.