eldavojohn writes to tell us that mass production of the first XO laptops has officially started. "The commencement of mass production means children in developing nations could have the rugged, open-source laptops in hand starting this month. The OLPC has already announced orders for kids in Uruguay and Mongolia. (Residents of the U.S. and Canada participating in the Give 1 Get 1 program--which donates an XO to a child in a developing nation for every machine sold online--are expected to start getting laptops in December.)"

Tech.Luver sends us word that, hot on the heels of reports that Verisign may be planning to sell DNS root server lookup data, ICANN has opened an investigation into a suspected practice by registrars it calls "domain name front running." The suspicion is that insiders at some registrars are using information from whois searches to snatch up desirable domain names before interested customers can register them. Here is ICANN's announcement of the investigation (PDF). ICANN asks that anyone who suspects they have been victimized by domain name front running to email them with details.

netbuzz writes "Unlimited really means unlimited, even in advertising. So says the New York State Attorney General's Office in squeezing a $1 million settlement out of Verizon Wireless for disconnecting 13,000 of its customers who had the temerity to believe that the unlimited service they were promised came with unlimited service. Verizon's statement explaining the settlement is a gem, too."

An anonymous reader writes "It's been widely reported that Comcast is engaged in a sneaky form of Internet filtering. The company is terminating its customers' BitTorrent sessions by sending misleading data onto the network. The end result is that instead of targeting key heavy users, Comcast is instead engaged in an all out war against P2P protocols. In an interview with CNET, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann states that Comcast is 'throwing a spanner in the works of the Internet, hoping that this will somehow reduce bandwidth usage overall.' Other lawyers seem to have smelled blood, and are circling in the water. Lohmann reveals that '[The EFF has] already been contacted by attorneys who are considering legal action against Comcast.' Could Comcast be facing a class-action?"

Rogue Pat writes "Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. Competitors will be able to buy interface protocols for 10.000 Euro to make their software work better with Windows. Moreover, Microsoft won't appeal the 500 million Euro fine any further."

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."

superglaze writes "Looking through an article on the smartphone office suite Quickoffice, I noted a claim by a company executive that OpenOffice users usually save their documents in a Microsoft format, e.g. .doc. Hence the company has no plans to support .odf. I guess I can see the rationale for this — it helps if you're sending a document to an MS-using company — but what's this community's general experience of saving in .odf vs. .doc format?"

jcgam69 writes "October 1 marked the first day of the Great Worldwide Star Count, a half-month citizen science project that will harness thousands of observers across the globe to help map light pollution."

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe reports that some iPhone users are mad as heck at Apple for bricking up their device in response to non-Apple-authorized software downloads. In a discussion thread on Apple's own iPhone forum, one user posts that he's 'Seeking respondents for possible class action lawsuit against Apple Inc. relating to refusal to service iPhones and related accessories under warranty.' Some who have replied to the post agree that Apple is being unbelievably arrogant and is ripe for legal action. But others say Cupertino is well within its rights to control its own device." Apple seems to have removed the cited post, but it is reproduced as screenshots in the article.

Update: 10/02 02:42 GMT by KD : Reader Cleverboy wrote in to note that the screenshots present in the article are of a posting on Macosrumors, not Apple's forum, and to question the conclusion that Apple removed any posting. The article has been updated since this story went live to make clear that the original posting by user "myndex" was on the Apple forum and was (apparently) removed by Apple; and that the screenshot is of a mirror post myndex made to Macosrumors.

Science_afficionado writes "A new study has found that cockroaches are morons in the morning and geniuses in the evening in terms of their learning capacity. Previous studies suggest that the learning capacity of both people and rats are also affected by their internal biological clocks. But the effect is far more dramatic in cockroaches and it is the first time it has been found in insects. And, no, the researchers didn't try giving their cockroaches a sip of coffee to see if it revived them!"

Stony Stevenson writes "According to a new online survey by Harris Interactive, more than half of IT workers say they've fallen asleep at work, while nearly half of techies also are apparently in the mood for love. Forty-seven percent of tech pros admit they've kissed a co-worker, according to the online survey of 5,700 U.S. workers, including 163 techies. The survey didn't indicate if those work taboos were committed by the same respondents, but in both cases, men were more likely to admit doing both. Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work, while only 35 percent of women admitted doing so."

l-ascorbic writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is poised to buy 5% of Facebook for $300 million to $500 million, valuing the company at up to $10 billion. Microsoft already handles advertising for the site."

GamePolitics is reporting that anti-game advocate Jack Thompson is seeking to have Halo 3 declared a nuisance to the public in Florida. He tried the same stunt with Bully, and failed then too. "As with Bully, Thompson clearly hopes the court will grant him a hearing. Although after last year's well-publicized Bully performance, which earned Thompson a Bar complaint from presiding Judge Ronald Friedman, that seems unlikely. More troubling by far are the long term implications of this action. Thompson apparently feels emboldened to invoke Florida's public nuisance law against any video game he desires to target. That is the essence of censorship and the video game industry cannot allow it to continue on any number of grounds - legal, moral or creative."

Christopher Blanc writes "Many Mozilla community members, including both volunteers and Mozilla Corporation employees, have been helping to reduce Firefox's memory usage and fix memory leak bugs lately. Hopefully, the result of this effort will be that Firefox 3 uses less memory than Firefox 2 did, especially after it has been used for several hours." Here's hoping. Frequent restarts of things on my computer make me furious. I can't imagine why anyone would tolerate such things.

Bayscribe writes "Vyro Games, a Dublin Ireland company, unveils a device today that forces you to relax while playing games. It is called a PiP, or "Personal Input Pod," and it measures things like the moisture in your hand to assess whether you're stressed. If you're showing signs of stress, your performance in a game deteriorates. If you relax, you do much better. The PiP communicates wirelessly with software on devices such as mobile phones, PCs or games consoles... If you relax, the dragon spreads its wings and flies. If not, it stumbles all over the place."