Technical Writing Geek writes "A number of states have moved to extend antitrust judgments against Microsoft until the year 2012. California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia are all contributing to the decision, and have released a report on the factors that lead to the extension. 'The report laments the state of OEM web browser bundling, saying that no major OEM currently distributes a browser other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). This is important due to the rise of new middleware platforms (such as Adobe's AIR and Microsoft's own Silverlight) that can create rich, OS-independent, web-based applications.' The report is slightly self-contradictory, but raises some valid points."

Tivo tries out PayPerPost- essentially pseudo viral marketing where you pay people for creating advertising for you and getting it out on the net. Unsurprisingly, when this all came out, people complained and they killed the program and tried to pull the videos when they realized that they were looking like tools.

Vox writes "As we discussed here a few days back, AT&T's Terms of Service has very broad language giving them the right to terminate the account of any AT&T Internet service customer who criticizes the company. Ars Technica notes that such broad language is not unusual in ISPs' terms of service, and that AT&T told them they won't be changing the contract. A company spokesman said it's not a big deal because they have no intent to censor criticism. AT&T claims to respect its subscribers' right to voice their opinions and says that the contract is aimed at stopping the exploitation of children, and other tangible wrongs. As the article notes, taking the company on faith after the spying scandal is asking maybe a little too much."

mhollis writes "Field experience has confirmed that if you have a hacked iPhone, it will become an iBrick if you use Software Update to install the latest update on your iPhone. The BBC reports: '[Apple's] warning has now proved correct as many owners are reporting their phones no longer work following installation of the update. Apple requires iPhone owners to take out a lengthy contract with AT&T in the United States but there are a number of programs on the net that unlock the device for use with other networks.' The only 'solution' is to unhack your iPhone."

fullstop writes "Google has finally launched their online presentation tool to complete its office offerings at Google Docs." Relatedly several users have also mentioned that Google plans to start selling ads for cell phone-targeted websites. "The company said that its new product, AdSense for Mobile, would establish a cellphone advertising network in which Google would match ads with the content of mobile Web pages, much as it does online. Other Internet giants, including Yahoo and AOLTime Warner, as well as some start-ups, have also created advertising networks tailored for mobile phones."

Futurepower(R) writes "Even though I have Automatic Updates turned off, on August 28, 2007, between 3:49 and 3:51 AM PDT, Microsoft installed new files on my Windows XP computer." Nine files are updated on Vista and on XP SP1, a different set of on each, relating to Windows Update itself. Microsoft-watch.com's Joe Wilcox and ZDnet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes confirm the stealth update.

BioShock, the moody drama-driven FPS for the Xbox 360 and PC, was released last month to rave reviews from the major gaming news sites. Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why. The work of Ken Levine and Irrational Games on the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 is sublime. It's incredibly atmospheric, the game's story is well written and compellingly told, and the first-person shooter gameplay is a respectable, tightly crafted experience. It's a really, really good game. I'll tell you now: it's a 5/5. So why all the angst? Why the backlash? Read on for my review of BioShock, and a few comments on the dangers of 'merely' being a good game.

jabjoe writes "Russian artists from Moscow have created goggles with realtime image filtering. Among the Photoshop-like filters that can be applied is, interestingly, ASCII: you can view the world in real time as ASCII. Pointless but cool."

taoman1 writes "A group of states led by California said in a court filing Thursday that ending oversight of Microsoft's business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of Windows Vista. The states want oversight extended at least through early next year. 'The justice department said in its report that while Microsoft's operating system market share hasn't dropped because of the consent decree, "it would misapprehend the purpose of the Final Judgments to rely on these facts to argue that the Final Judgments have been ineffective. Microsoft was never found to have acquired or increased its monopoly market share unlawfully." In its report, Microsoft directly countered California's claims and said, the "Final Judgments were never designed to reduce Microsoft's share in any putative market."'"

Ed Albro, PC World writes "At PC World, we've got a story today on salespeople at Best Buy and Circuit City pushing consumers to pay the stores' technicians to create recovery discs for their new laptops. Recovery discs are important to have, of course, but the fact is that they're easy to make yourself. Or you can get them from the manufacturer of your PC, often for half of what Best Buy and Circuit City charge you. The salespeople often tell you that you can buy from the manufacturer — but they claim you'll pay twice as much as the stores charge."

rishimathew writes to tell us TechNewsWorld is reporting that the new RealPlayer 11, not even out of beta yet, has a lot of great new features including the ability to easily rip streaming videos from sites like YouTube, Revver, and Heavy.com. "With the release of RealPlayer 11, the company is boldly moving into another dicey realm: ripping streaming video. Sure, there are lots of means out there to capture video from sites like YouTube Latest News about YouTube, Revver, Heavy.com and such. There are programs like WM Recorder (US$49.95) and Replay A/V ($49.95), as well as Web sites like Keepvid.com and Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Firefox add-ons like VideoDownloader. I've tried some of them. Few, though, can match the slick ease of use of RealPlayer 11 -- and it isn't even out of beta yet."

With several new areas of expansion for Opera The Register took a few minutes to talk to Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. The interview addresses several of the most recent news items on the Opera front including, the adoption to Nintendo's Wii console, several advocates switching to Firefox, and others. "We just try to focus on our side. We've always focused on a somewhat richer interface. We've had a lot of negative comments ourselves over the years; for example, when we introduced tabbed browsing a lot of people said it doesn't make sense. We've introduced things like zooming, mouse gestures and the like - and we find they find their way into other browsers; tabs found their way into IE7. We are being copied, but we would like to focus on features and giving users a good experience."

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DailyTech, a blogger has discovered a Y2K bug in a NASA climate study by the same writer who accused the Bush administration of trying to censor him on the issue of global warming. The authors have acknowledged the problem and released corrected data. Now the study shows the warmest year on record for the contiguous 48 states as being 1934, not 1998 as previously reported in the media. In fact, the corrected study shows that half of the 10 warmest years on record occurred before World War II." The article's assertion that there's a propaganda machine working on behalf of global warming theorists is outside the bounds of the data, which I think is interesting to note.

CNet is reporting that Japanese car manufacturers are teaming up to develop a standard automotive operating system. "Just as computer operating systems [...] allow multiple applications to communicate with one another, an automotive operating system enables different driving systems to work together. The standard automotive operating system from Japan will include everything from fuel injection, brakes and power steering to power windows. Currently, certain mechanical car parts are interchangeable from model to model. Smart car parts that operate off a common software standard would enable that kind of convenience to continue, while allowing them to communicate more easily with other smart components in a car."