Every technology that starts out expensive comes down in price, and solid state drives (SSDs) are no exception. Super Talent Technology today announced two new SATA-based drives cheap enough that they are actually affordable.

The new MasterDrive LX come in 64GB and 128GB capacities, with suggested prices of $179 for the 64GB unit and $299 for the 128GB unit. Both models will begin shipping this week.

The MasterDrive LX uses a SATA-II 3Gbps interface that makes it compatible and interchangeable with standard hard disk drives. These SSDs support sequential read speeds of up to 100 MB/sec, and sequential write speeds of up to 40 MB/sec.

Super Talent also makes a variety of memory products and uses its own integrated error correction code, wear leveling and bad bit management functions to improve the reliability and lifespan of the SSDs.

The ball's in your court, SanDisk/Samsung/Toshiba.

IPhone 3G customers either have been or will be getting a text message on their better-behaved phones from Apple alerting them of a recall of the USB power adapter that comes with the phone. The adapter is a wall plug with the USB connector on the other end, so iPhone users can charge their phone from a standard power outlet.

Apple has realized there is a problem with these mini-adapters. The metal prongs can break off when removing the plug and remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock. There have been reports of the prongs breaking off on Apple enthusiast sites but so far, no one has been zapped.

Apple has already begun shipping replacement adapters with the newer iPhones. Look on the prong-side of the plug for a green dot like picture below. If you adapter has the dot, you are in the clear and do not need to go through the recall.

If not, then starting October 10, you have two choices: take the plug into one of 200 Apple retail stores and get a replacement, or mail it back to Apple by filling out an application on the Web.

Sun Microsystems has updated its MD D20 mobile datacenter to increase the density of the servers, offering more space for rack-mounted units and allowing customers to choose from a broader array of larger rack-mount networking and server devices.

The Sun MD systems are densely-packed datacenters within a standard shipping container. It comes in 20 and 40-foot versions. The D20 has room for seven racks, including four with a usable depth of 78.1 cm while the remaining three have usable depth of 115 cm. The previous generation, the S20, only held the 78.1 cm units.

As a result, the D20 can hold 240 rack units, compared to 280 for the S20, but that also allows it to carry larger servers, such as the SPARC Enterprise M4000 and M5000 servers, StorageTek SL500 Modular Library and the StorageTek 9985V System.

The Sun MD mobile datacenters also support a wide range of third-party equipment in both the standard and deep rack configurations.

The datacenters contain not only the systems but the power and cooling necessary to operate the system, making them usable in any climate. One of the most famous of the MD deployments is an undisclosed datacenter in Japan, 100 meters down an abandoned mine, where they rely on the natural ambient cool climate to do the work of fighting the heat.

The blogosphere had a field day with this image below. It was the industrial metal band Nine Inch Nails performing with what appeared to be a Windows blue screen of death crash on the backdrop screens.

Everyone was calling it "NINE INCH FAIL," as the word "Fail" has come into vogue for being used as a noun these days. There's a whole site, run by the I Can Has Cheezburger folks I profiled last year, called Failblog, with some real spit-on-the-monitor-inducing pictures and videos.

Turns out NIN frontman Trent Reznor got the drop on a lot of people. Reznor is very computer-savvy. He did the ambient music soundtrack for id Software's game Quake back in 1995, way before it became fashionable for bands to include their music in videogames.

Turns out the BSOD is part of the show, not an accidental crash. As Gizmodo first noted, Reznor is a die-hard Mac user, and this was a way of poking fun at Microsoft and giving the audience a chuckle at the same time.

He may have a head like a hole but he's also got a great sense of humor.

After all the hype surrounding Google's Chrome browser - which we are as guilty of as anyone else - how much market share do you think it has after week one?

If you guessed less than one percent, come on down and claim your prize.

The tracking service Net Applications reports that Chrome usage has dropped from 1.7 percent last week when Chrome was first released to around 0.75 percent, quite a drop.

Of course, that's not indicative of anything. Sure, there was a mad rush to download and try it. And then everyone goes back to their old browser. Chrome had a lot of nifty elements to it, but it's still pretty early software and had more than a few problems and shortcomings.

There was also some negative news surrounding the browser, like the restrictive End User License Agreement (EULA), which Google quickly fixed, and the revelation that your searches are being saved by Google. So that may have scared some people off.

Its eventual fate is yet to be determined. It's all in Google's hands. It needs to fix the browser's bugs, work on that UI and make sure privacy concerns are met. Of course, it could very well be that Google simply wants the Chrome technology to show up in other browsers, a very altruistic thing, and doesn't care if it stays in the single digits.

Some Chrome users took a close look at the End User License Agreement (EULA) for its new Chrome browser, apparently a closer look than Google's legal department, and did not like what they saw.

One section of the EULA gave the company "a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through" the new browser.

Concerns about copyright and privacy were raised on numerous Web sites, including a news aggregator called Tap the Hive, which was the first to point out the EULA contents. Critics suggested the language would allow Google to use any Web content displayed in Chrome without getting copyright permission.

In other words, content created in Chrome would belong to Google, even though Chrome was just the conduit to enter that content. That would include me typing this into Movable Type, as the blogging service is accessed via a browser.

However, a Google attorney sent a statement to Tap the Hive and the news site Ars Technica that it was an honest mistake, the result of copying in an old EULA from other products and using it in Chrome. Google promised to remove the language from that section of the EULA and apply it retroactively to those who downloaded it.

Well one problem down, a few others to settle. The security site SecuriTeam has found a serious weakness in Chrome's handling of malicious code. Chrome uses an older version of WebKit, the open-source browser technology also used in Apple's Safari browser, that includes the vulnerability.

Chrome has a download progress bar that, when clicked, will execute the file that has just been downloaded. If it's an executable, a window will pop up, warning the user about downloading malicious code. But if it's a Java archive file, a .JAR, it will run it with no warning.

Another vulnerability, which has a proof of concept on the site Evil Fingers, makes it possible to craft a specific link to crash the browser.

That's why we have beta testing.

For anyone following the rock/metal scene, it's no secret Metallica has been on the outs with its fan base for some time. A string of bad albums and suing fans for downloading its MP3s did wonders to spoil the reputation for a band that had previously been viewed as one of the biggest, most popular and most significant bands to come along in ages.

Its new album, "Death Magnetic," is due on September 12, but despite the band's best precautions, it has leaked to the Internet. Search any BitTorrent site and there it is, in its full 10 song, 70 minute glory.

This is hardly uncommon. Every major album release that I've been following for the past few years has leaked a few weeks to a month prior to official release. It usually ends up on IRC and BitTorrent trading posts, and once it gets into those networks, trying to stop the trading would be like holding back the ocean with a bucket.

But there will be no lawsuits this time. Drummer Lars Ulrich, who was particularly singled out for fan vilification over the lawsuits against fans and Napster, told a San Francisco radio DJ "It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy."

He should be. The album is getting very good reviews, not just by critics but by fans alike who grabbed a copy. The band needed some positive word of mouth for once.

And yes, it is quite good.

By now you have probably heard of "The iPhone Girl," the cute Chinese factory worker  flashing the peace sign, whose picture was found on one man's iPhone. Her picture was taken by a worker at the Foxconn factory where the iPhone is made and left on the phone, which wound up in the hands of a British customer. He then posted the pictures on MacRumors.

Since her photo was first posted on the Web, there has been a flood of interest in her. Who she is, is she all right? China's Southern Metropolitan Daily named her "China's prettiest factory girl." There is even a blog dedicated to her, although it has branched out a bit.

Well, don't hold your breath for a Maxim layout any time soon, she's not interested in the attention. A Foxconn representative told the South China Morning Post that she is a little freaked out by all the attention.

"She is just a young girl who has come to the city from her remote hometown. She is never been in such a situation," said the rep. "She is really scared by the media. She told me she wanted to quit her job and go back home to get away from this. We let her off work today so she could rest."

Foxconn has said more than once that her job is not at risk and has called the incident a "beautiful mistake." The elephant in the room, though, is no one believes it. The bad taste joke at some recent trade shows I attended was people thought she was actually in physical danger.

Joking aside, what no one in the press seems willing to say is it is a genuine concern. In conversations as well as e-mail and IM exchanges, more than a few people have expressed real concern for her. After all, this is China we're talking about. In the period of the just-passed Olympics, the government:

• Put dissidents under house arrest.
• Arrested pro-Tibet supporters.
• More than once.
• Ordered Christian churches closed during the games
• Greatly increased the number of arrests during the games.
• Blocked Internet access for all reporters.
• Blocked access to iTunes when a pro-Tibet album came out.

If the government will behave like that while the whole planet is watching, what in the world would they do to one anonymous factory worker? China wanted the Olympics to be a chance to change its global image when the opposite happened. It lived up to its reputation as a repressive police state. So yes, people were curious about her, and they were also worried about her because of the Chinese government's well-earned bad reputation.