zakkie writes "New Zealand fisherman have caught a massive 450-kg colossal squid in Antarctic waters. This is by far the biggest yet found, measuring over 10 meters in length and weighing 450 kg. It has been taken back to New Zealand for study." The NZ government's announcement page features a downloadable backgrounder on the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) and a 1.1-MB popup portrait of the animal in the fishing boat's hold.

shoemortgage writes "The Association for Computing Machinery has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen,74, is the first woman to receive the Turing Award in the 41 years of its history. She retired from IBM in 2002."

A number of readers let us know that Cisco and Apple have settled the lawsuit over the use of the iPhone name for Apple's new multimedia phone. The agreement allows Apple and Cisco both to use the iPhone brand on their own products. Also, the companies said they would explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, consumer and business communications. Apple still faces a suit over the name in Canada and one over its touch-screen technology in the UK.

Stormwave0 writes "A Microsoft appeal against a decision for AT&T and their speech recognition patent has reached the Supreme Court. AT&T has argued that they did not license software using the patent for sales overseas. Microsoft, in the original case, argued "that it wasn't really liable for infringing on AT&T's licensing rights because it only supplied the golden disk to the replicator one time, and that disk did not really contain software in a usable form anyway." With that argument rejected, the case has moved in an unexpected direction. The court is now debating whether or not software is actually patentable."