Scott M. Fulton, III

Following BetaNews' story yesterday on the State of Massachusetts' decision to propose formally accepting Microsoft's Office Open XML as a "suitable" format, advocates on two of the three sides of this issue wrote us to say they were concerned our story's contents might tend to favor a different side.

First, a Microsoft spokesperson cautioned us about a statement we cited from Linux Foundation board member and attorney Andrew Updegrove. "I was reading your story on the Massachusetts policy and was noticing something in Andy Updegrove's quote at the end of your piece which is actually inaccurate," the spokesperson wrote, "which I'm guessing he may not realize, but thought you'd want to know.

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Now with an official fresh consumer-grade iPhone in its laboratories, CE analysis firm iSuppli can fine-tune its estimates of how much of a markup Apple adds to the device, based on its estimated bill of materials. Each 8 GB model which retails for $599, iSuppli estimates, cost Apple a total of $264.85 in manufacturing and parts costs.

While profit margins are certainly not unheard of, and are arguably the reason why capitalism exists in the first place, Apple's possible 55.6% gross take from each retail sale is, by any estimate, healthy. Other expenses for royalties on intellectual property, shipping, and certainly marketing must also be taken into account.

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After a decade and a half of negotiations, waiting, and litigation - with the emphasis toward the latter - the DVD Copy Control Association, which administers the CSS copy protection scheme, formally announced yesterday that it will soon become legal for businesses to burn DVDs on demand whose copy protection includes CSS.

The announcement comes at what may finally be the resolution of a debate among different infighting groups of movie studios and CE manufacturers, over how - or whether - to implement a way for licensed companies to sell DVDs through a replication service. One such service, CinemaNow, has been in business since July 2006, offering licensed download-to-own movies via the Internet.

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Whether it amounts to "corporate espionage" or not (most likely not), the case of Oracle v. SAP may have significant ramifications on how the world's leading information providers guard their information systems. In his company's defense this morning, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann admitted to reporters that, while an SAP division did download some material from Oracle inappropriately, the material was for the division's customers and not for SAP customers or SAP.

The problem is one of boundaries: When a division of one company is licensed to provide customer support for the division of another company, how should those companies keep their distance from one another? TomorrowNow is a leased customer support firm for PeopleSoft, J. D. Edwards, and Siebel business software. It's owned by SAP, and PeopleSoft is owned by Oracle. One of TomorrowNow's services is downloading updates for the software it supports, on behalf of the customers of that software's manufacturers.

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In response to a BetaNews inquiry over whether last Friday's announcement of new Barcelona server-class processors at frequencies up to 2.0 GHz for August release was as fast as we would see for 2007, an AMD spokesperson told us faster models would be made available later in the year.

"AMD expects that its native quad-core processors will scale to higher frequencies in Q407 in both standard and SE (Special Edition) versions," the spokesperson told BetaNews, reiterating from a statement made earlier. "Designed to operate within the same thermal envelopes as current generation AMD Opteron processors, AMD estimates that the new processors can provide a performance increase up to 70% on certain database applications and up to 40% on certain floating point applications, with subsequent higher frequency processors expected to significantly add to this performance advantage."

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After public complaints amassed over what seemed to be reluctance on the part of SWsoft's Parallels division to turn over to open source developers modifications it made to their code, Parallels told BetaNews this afternoon it has done just that.

The caretakers of the Wine library for running Windows applications on Mac OS X now have copies of modified forms of their source code, as the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) mandated that modifiers make available, according to Parallels.

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In what could be Microsoft's most symbolic victory to date in the battle to legitimize the principal formats used by its Office applications, the State of Massachusetts officially declared Office Open XML -- the new standard format set in Office 2007 -- "another standardized XML-based file format specification suitable for office applications."

The declaration, which came as part of a review draft of version 4.0 of the state IT division's Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM), states that the standard document format it refers to by its standards agency designation ECMA-376 is one adequate candidate for use as an open, XML-based format, as well as OpenDocument Format.

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Major press sources including The New York Times this morning are citing anonymous executives reportedly with direct involvement in negotiations, as saying Universal Music Group has opted not to renew its annual contract with Apple's iTunes.

The company will instead opt for a month-by-month arrangement, similar to what it has with smaller MP3 distributors, which could give the publisher greater freedom and perhaps more leverage in setting terms.

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The producer of Wine, an open-source, reverse-engineered set of libraries designed for running Windows applications on Unix-based systems, is raising suspicion over whether virtualization company SWsoft, which makes Parallels, is failing to uphold the terms of its open source license by not releasing the source code it already admits to having modified.

Just one month ago, SWsoft released the latest edition of its Parallels virtualization environment for Mac OS X, enabling users to install Windows or Linux and their applications, and to have those applications appear to run seamlessly on the Mac desktop. As some Parallels users discovered almost by accident -- by way of responses to their bug reports -- certain key elements of Parallels related to OpenGL and DirectX graphics transformations are handled by modified portions of the Wine open source library.

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A few dozen people waited in line since early afternoon outside an AT&T store in Columbus, Indiana. At a few minutes past six o'clock, twelve were let in at a time, and in only a half hour's time, everyone in line plus at least ten others walked out with an iPhone and accessories. There were no hitches, and plenty of smiling faces. So why isn't it like this everywhere else in the country?

It may very well have been the nicest place to wait in line for an iPhone in America. With approximately 39,000 citizens, Columbus, Indiana, is about an hour's drive south of Indianapolis in slow traffic. A few decades ago when small town America became threatened by recession, a lackluster economy, and diminishing jobs, Columbus refused to wither away and become a ghost town.

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A meeting of ECMA International Technical Committee 46 will be convened next month in Cambridge, to begin the drafting process for an independent specification for "XML Paper" or XPS - the typeset document standard created by Microsoft as an alternative to Adobe's PDF format.

The notice came silently, as a very short post on the organization's Web site. However, it immediately drew criticism from attorney Andrew Updegrove, who represents high-tech firms and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Linux Foundation.

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Last week, as we reported, Qualcomm's request for a stay of injunction against the sale of certain of its chips in the US was denied, and that denial was upheld by the International Trade Commission. This after the company was found to have infringed upon three Broadcom patents. At that time, Broadcom said it was open to seeking a negotiated settlement with Broadcom.

As Bloomberg News first reported yesterday, Broadcom invited Qualcomm to the table but set a fairly hefty entry fee: $6 for every unit of Qualcomm's infringing chips already exported to the US, as a catch-up licensing fee. Qualcomm has apparently rejected that offer, publicly stating that it was hoping for something closer to $100 million to call it even, and then cross-license each other's patents for no charge.

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INDIANAPOLIS - There were at least a handful of folks outside the Apple Store at Keystone at the Crossing Mall in Indianapolis as early as 4 a.m. this morning, before a security crew politely told them to return at 7. They did as they were told, and were met by another handful of reporters from early morning local TV news. Perhaps it was the bright spotlights and the microwave truck that helped it sink in for them: They were present for history...or at least as much history as you could find at the crack of dawn in a mall parking lot.

Supposedly, the Apple Store isn't the only place for early adopters to get an iPhone. Officials with the local AT&T outlet stores here tell me there will be units on hand in Indianapolis stores and throughout the state, after reopening early this evening at 6:00 pm following a dramatic, one-time-only 4:30 pm closing to break out the boxes...if they have any. AT&T salespeople here (especially at the franchise stores) have been telling customers not to pin their hopes on too many units coming in, though their bosses told me there should be plenty of units to go around, at least at the corporate owned stores.

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Lawmakers debating whether Congress should stop the imposition of dramatically higher royalties on Internet streaming music providers heard testimony this morning from people involved in small businesses throughout the independent music economy: a private webcaster, two artists, two indie record producers, a public broadcaster, and the president of the nation's leading musicians' union.

But almost everyone in the room today appeared to agree on one thing: The ultimate resolution to the issue of how artists should be fairly paid for their contribution to commercial music, and how webcasters can equitably contribute to artists' compensation, was in the hands of precisely no one in attendance.

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A 165-page report issued yesterday by the US Federal Trade Commission examines the arguments surrounding the issue of whether to enforce "net neutrality" provisions - which would essentially mean equal access among consumers to all Internet content regardless of provider or service class - before coming to almost zero conclusions regarding a possible course of action.

Since the phrase first entered the public vocabulary two years ago, supporters of what they claim to be net neutrality say lawmakers were busy inserting new provisions for future nationwide broadband licensees that would enable them to charge different rates to different customers. Such provisions could let some ISPs give preferential treatment to selected customers, or what lawmakers called an "Internet fast lane." Today, broadband providers require regional and municipal licenses for each region of the country where they do business.

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