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It has now been over a month since Mark Russinovich broke the story about Sony BMG's DRM software that installed root kit code onto consumers' hard drives—exposing infected computers to malware intrusions and reporting back to Sony's servers via spyware installed without consumers' knowledge or consent. Rather than growing stale, however, the story just keeps going and going as new details come to light almost every day.

The MP3 digital music format continues to gain momentum. Only two weeks ago, Thomson S.A., the international electronics conglomerate (parent of RCA and ProScan), announcedhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10436/">announced; a 20% investment in MusicMatch">http://www.musicmatch.com/">MusicMatch, Inc., the San Diego, California-based maker of management software for the upstart format. Last week Thomson took a further radical stance by announcing RCA's own MP3 player, the Lyra, to a gathering of more than 400 dealers at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.

For the first time in more than 10 years, individual investors have a chance to own a piece of one of the oldest and most recognized names in the American electronics industry. As of November 1, RCAhttp://www.rca.com/">RCA; officially came back on the stock market, when parent company Thomson Multimedia made a successful initial public offering of 21 million shares. The stock (NYSE: TMS) debuted at $22.62 per share and closed Friday, November 5 at $29.25.

For quite a while now, Pioneer and Marantz have stuck their necks out with the few universal SACD/DVD-A/DVD/CD players available. Not any longer, as Onkyohttp://www.onkyousa.com">Onkyo;, Teac and Yamaha join the club with new machines, aimed at consumers hedging their bets as to who will win the high-rez format wars.

The Three Tenors may have reached a global audience of 2 billion people during their performance prior to the final game of the World Cup, but they had only 80,000 fans on hand in Paris's Champs de Mars park, acording to estimates by Paris police. That number was only 10% of the anticipated 800,000, most of whom stayed away because of unseasonably cold and windy weather.

Making good on a promise reportedhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10923/">reported; back in December of last year, Threshold">http://www.threshold-audio.com">Threshold Audio has returned the Threshold brand to the market with a new stereo power amplifier.

Threshold Corporation, long known as one of the original high-end audio equipment pioneers, is discussing plans to restructure the company to meet new market conditions. Threshold, based in Camarillo, California, manufactures high-end audio amplifiers, preamplifiers, and digital products under the Threshold, FortT, and PS Audio product lines. (PS Audio, of which Threshold Corp. is the majority owner, is currently a separate corporation.)