Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft says it will extend the sales of Windows XP Home to OEMs by several years, but it's not in response to the SaveXP petition. Microsoft is supposedly making the move in part to ensure that Linux doesn't dominate the market for certain types of 'ultra-low-cost' laptops. XP will be available for OEMs until June 30, 2010, or one year after the availability of the next client version of Windows, whichever date comes later. This greatly extends the earlier XP deadline of June 30 of this year (which was an extension itself), and means XP will potentially be installed on new computers nearly a decade after its original release. The author of the article suggests that the post-June 2008 release of Atom-based laptops encouraged Microsoft to extend XP, even though Intel says Atom can support Vista. Intel also claims that 'Moblin' Linux will be available on Atom-equipped mobile devices starting this summer."

An anonymous reader writes "Just noticed that Second Life released their client under the GPL today, and that they're up to 2.4 million users. Article says that 15% of users contribute scripted objects."

Aranth writes "The staff at Ars Technica has gotten its hands on a demo of Duke Nukem Forever, and has written up a review. It seems the game is near ready for release! As the article explains, the reason it has taken so long to develop is because this is the first real Web 3.0 application- it has 'been rewritten as an Ajax application written using the Ruby on Rails framework' and runs in any web browser, although some seem to have difficulties." Sadly, the game looks to be deficient in the area of ponies. :(((( But, it's playable from my hiptop!! :))))