After a jury sided with Verizon in its patent-infringment case against it, Vonage told customers and investors not to worry, because it was developing a workaround that would allow it to continue operating without infringing upon any of the patents in question. However, the company has now confirmed that there is no such workaround, and it's not certain that one would be feasible, given the breadth of the Verizon patents. It's filing for a permanent stay of the injunction against it, apparently with the hope that the appeals process will work out in its favor. If that move isn't successful, it's going to be awfully hard for the company to stay in business. Seeing the stay denied would be a dream scenario for Verizon, since the patents in question are so broad that it's conceivable it could be impossible to run a landline-replacement VoIP service in the US without infringing upon them -- meaning it could shut down the entire US VoIP industry and the stiff competition it provides the company's traditional phone services. Verizon's not the only company rubbing its hands gleefully, either. The whole VoIP space is so patented up that it's under threat not just from entrenched rivals who would like to see its growth stymied, but by companies that have done little to bring their innovations to market and are looking to make a quick buck.

A fellow crew member dangled an orange in front of Suni Williams as she ran the Boston Marathon on a treadmill on the International Space Station

With Beijing as IDF venue and plans to build a wafer fab, chipmaker signals importance it places on the booming Asian nation.

There was an amazing party last Friday at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA celebrating the anniversary of the first human spaceflight by Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin. From Crave, CNET's gadgets blog.

Filed under: Laptops

This one's not quite as clear as we would wish, but here's what we've got: Asustek is prepping to launch a series of cheap laptops based on Intel's Classmate PC platform in the second half of this year, which will go up against (what else?) the OLPC XO. What we can't quite figure is if Asustek is building these OEM-style for Intel branding (shown above), or if it's just using the design to line its own pockets -- it could really go either way. The best news is price, since we've been rather worried about that $400 tag that's been kicked around, more-or-less officially, for the Classmate PC. Apparently the 1GB SSD version of Asustek's 7-inch Classmate PC will start at $199, with price points at $249, $299, $399 and $549 for capacities all the way up to 40GB. Ah, nothing like those educational laptop warm-fuzzies on a cold Monday afternoon.

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Static electricity on the Moon varies on an 18-year cycle and will be about twice as high when NASA returns to the Moon than during the Apollo era, a new study says