Mercury News has details of a San Francisco judge's decision that Google should give the DoJ some details on its search engine, but is not required to turn over records to the government. From the article: "McElvain emphasized the study would be more meaningful if it included search requests processed by Google, which by some estimates fields nearly half of all online queries in the United States. Ware concurred with the Justice Department on that point, writing in his order that 'the government's study may be significantly hampered if it did not have access to some information from the most often used search engine.' But Ware said the government didn't clearly explain why it needed a list of search requests to conduct its study, prompting him to conclude the Web site addresses would be adequate." Reaction to the news is available on the Google Blog.

An anonymous reader writes "A Yahoo! news piece has some sales details for the upcoming Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players. They also have some details on disc drives that read the new formats." From the article: "Sony has priced its first desktop computer that will have a Blu-ray Disc burner. The drive will be able to write to 25GB and 50GB BD-RE (rewritable) and BD-R (write once) discs. Sony will start selling 25GB BD-RE and BD-R discs in April for $20 and $25 respectively and 50GB capacity versions of the same discs later in the year for $48 and $60 respectively. The Vaio RC will be launched in 'early summer' and will cost around $2300. At the CeBIT show in Germany last week, Sony announced plans for a Vaio notebook with a Blu-ray Disc drive."

DigiDave writes "A time honored tradition on St Patty's Day is to drink green beer. But some breweries go out of their way to make sure that the brewskies we drink are always green, by using environmentally friendly brewing methods. The makers of Fat Tire, for example, use a cogeneration process that involves anaerobic bacteria turning wastewater into methane gas for power."

CRIAWatch writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association has quietly issued a new study that contradicts many of its own claims about the impact of P2P usage on the music industry. Michael Geist summarizes the 144 page study by noting that the research 'concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders' computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services.'"

An anonymous reader writes "It's an election year again, and the usual PR causes are being picked up. Senators are once again pushing for a .XXX top-level domain to 'corral pornography'." From the article: "The bill suggests, but does not require, that .xxx serve as the domain name ending. Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department. It's unclear whether the measure will go very far. First of all, it could be struck down as unconstitutional, said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "

dylanduck writes "New simulations show that big asteroid impacts on Earth could have sent about 600 million boulders flying into space. About 100 have reached Jupiter's moon Europa - but they landed at 24 miles/sec. 'This must be rather frustrating if you're a bacterium that survived launch from Earth,' says a researcher. But 30 boulders from each impact reach Titan - and they land gently." From the article: "'I thought the Titan result was really surprising - how many would get there and how slowly they'd land,' Treiman told New Scientist. 'The thing I don't know about is if there are any bugs on Earth that would be happy living on Titan.' Titan's surface temperature is a very cold -179C and its chemistry is very different from Earth's."

Dumitru Erhan writes "The Economist has a special report on open-source. It analyzes the way open-source projects succeed and finds that a rigid, business-like organizational structure is of vital importance to the quality of the final product. It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in, but which have 'real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place'. There is also a discussion of open-source methods being applied to non-software projects." From the article: "Constant self-policing is required to ensure its quality. This lesson was brought home to Wikipedia last December, after a former American newspaper editor lambasted it for an entry about himself that had been written by a prankster. His denunciations spoke for many, who question how something built by the wisdom of crowds can become anything other than mob rule."

gr8_phk writes "An interesting article over at C|Net claims that playing DRMed music can reduce battery life up to 25 percent. Yet another reason to stick with plain old MP3 files." From the article: "Those who belong to subscription services such as Napster or Rhapsody have it worse. Music rented from these services arrive in the WMA DRM 10 format, and it takes extra processing power to ensure that the licenses making the tracks work are still valid and match up to the device itself. Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them."

prostoalex writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat down with PC Magazine to discuss some of the current issues swirling around Google, such as China and censorship, growth of the video content on the Internet, Microsoft's planned move into online ads, working with AOL and Internet neutrality." From the article: "Schmidt was quick to say that the acquisition of Writely was not meant to create a competitor to Microsoft Office, which he said solves a complicated and important problem of work productivity. Writely is a server-based editing system where you can move your files around, he said, and there are places where a rich text editor is useful in Google."

Peretz writes "NASA has found evidence reinforcing a theory of what took place post-Big Bang and time expansion. They claim: 'Over the course of millions of years, gravity exploited the density differences to create the structure of the universe---stars and galaxies separated by vast voids.' Thereby creating a 'structure' to the universe -- a kiddush cup. '...finds that the first stars---the forebears of all subsequent generations of stars and of life itself---were fully formed remarkably early, only about 400 million years after inflation. This is called the era of reionization, the point when the light from the first stars ionized hydrogen atoms, liberating electrons from the protons.'"

turnitover writes "The future's not all Firefox, Deer Park and Camino, insists Microsoft. At its Mix '06 conference in Las Vegas, reports Microsoft Watch, company execs insisted that there's a bright future for IE. They not only distributed a 'layout-complete' build of IE 7.0, but offered hints about what the new version of the browser geeks love to disdain (yes, it will include ActiveX) will include. Also shown: tools to test IE compatibility. But with what? Standards or IE 6?"

jayintune writes "2old2play has an interesting article about spamming on Xbox Live. The new 360 version of Burnout Revenge rewards players with Live Achievement points for spamming members of their friends list with links to Burnout player videos. The catch is that you need to own the game to view any of these videos."

prostoalex writes "When you read a news item about a company buyout or a two-person research project hitting big, how many times have you thought "I wonder if I could run a software company." Apparently, quite a few of software developers are discovering the entrepreneur within, which explains the ever-increasing number of threads on the Business of Software, Software CEO and other similar forums. However, most of the software entrepreneurs are coders, and not business majors. For them the business side of running a company constitutes that grey area that people with suits, expensive glasses and knowledge of word "synergy" learn in business schools. What will be the market for your product? What should you charge for a software app? Should you go freeware, ad-ware, shareware, trialware or open source? How will you accept payments? What are the laws for incorporating a company in the state of Nebraska, and will the IRS go after you, if you don't hire an accountant, and incorporate in Moms basement, which is zoned for residential area? How about marketing - will you be able to reach all the left-handed accountants in the Eastern United States, or should you buy a highway billboard advertising your image editing application?" Read the rest of Alex's review.

Last weekend the players of Final Fantasy XI attended their annual fan fest. 1up has a blowout on coverage of the event, with a rundown on the event's announcements, an interview with the development team, and a fan-fest edition of My Life in Vana'diel. Eurogamer was on the ground there as well, with some comments about cat-ear-wearing fans rounding out their coverage. From that article: "Whooping players, each hanging dry-eye-balled and pregnant-lung-ed with anticipation tiptoe transfixed. They swing on every word their creators choose to bless them with. Each announcement of gameplay tweaking and balancing, however mundane to an outsider (new spells for Black Mages! White Mages to be able to heal all ailments in one go! Warriors can now throw axes! Mog Lockers will be able to hold 140 items!) brings with it jeers or cheers from those players in the audience that will see their character's social stock increase or decrease as a result. Black Mages are to be penalised for questing in groups: Hell Yes! Hell No! All around players fist the air or stamp their feet in incredulous response to the microcosmically evolutionary pronouncements."

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on Microsoft's latest announcements that it is going after large-business computing, a realm that IBM currently has a stronghold on." From the article: "In both cases, the company has fashioned 'enterprise' versions of the products with additional security and collaboration-enabling features for sale to large businesses. Microsoft has spent $20 billion over the past three years on these upgrades, and Ballmer says it will spend $500 million over the next year marketing them to corporations. 'We're unlocking the next wave of growth for Microsoft,' Ballmer predicted during a press conference after his speech." We've previously discussed Microsoft's plans for IBM.