According to reporters for the blog Destructoid attending a hearing in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Judge Ronald Freeman sampled for two hours the soon-to-be-released Rockstar game for PlayStation 2, Bully, and has decided against prohibition of its sale in the state of Florida.

The reporter on the scene said Judge Freeman indicated that he saw nothing so particularly violent about this specific game that would merit its shipment being blocked. "There's nothing in the game that you wouldn't see on TV every night," he remarked.

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As widely anticipated, President Bush this morning signed a bill whose principal purpose is to tighten security measures for the nation's sea ports. But attached to that bill at the very last minute -- in order to prevent Democrats running for re-election next month from stopping it -- was a federal ban on banking institutions knowingly transferring funds to businesses or individuals that may conduct gambling operations in states and areas where gambling is prohibited.

It isn't an outright gambling ban, or "prohibition," but for several of the world's online gambling casino operators -- most of whom, curiously, reside outside the US -- it may as well have been. One key reason is that the law now mandates that banks work out some type of transaction security system within the next nine months, that can electronically block funds transfers to institutions on a blacklist.

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Microsoft issued a statement this morning saying it is going ahead with plans to release Windows Vista to volume licensees worldwide on November 30, as previously scheduled. There will be no further delays, even in Europe and Korea where competitors have recently raised complaints, but Microsoft will be making changes to Vista.

Microsoft indicated last month, it might have had to delay Vista's release in the EU in order to address concerns raised by the European Commission. Some of Microsoft's rivals had raised concerns there that some Vista features might be too exclusive, preventing customers from choosing alternatives from other suppliers. South Korea will also benefit from these changes, as the company has been facing antitrust proceedings there as well.

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A Miami-Dade circuit court judge has ordered Take 2 Interactive -- whose Rockstar Games studio is responsible for the controversial, though successful, Grand Theft Auto series -- to make available a copy of Rockstar's unreleased game Bully, in order to determine whether it violates the standards set by the state's public nuisance laws. The game is scheduled for US release on Tuesday.

According to the gaming blog Destructoid, who has sent a reporter to cover the trial live, the judge will be seated with a Take 2 employee, presumably in chambers, to play any of randomly chosen missions from Bully.

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UPDATE: Thursday evening, Corel spokesperson Greg Wood commented to BetaNews, "Today's announcement is intended to communicate our plans to be very active in providing our products on Windows Vista, and to advise customers that they can choose Corel products with confidence on the new OS."

Wood added that the company will be announcing its Vista certification for software products on an ongoing basis, but is currently continuing to work on possible additions to existing products that could help maintain their compatibility with Vista.

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Though the precise details remain uncertain this morning until legal documents are finally released, processor producer Transmeta filed suit against Intel in US District Court in Delaware. Although few details are known at this time, analysts today are speculating that based on Transmeta's current product line, the patents it claims Intel infringed upon may concern power management techniques in semiconductors.

Weighing against that argument, however, is Transmeta's own statement this morning, saying the technologies in question stretch far back in Intel's history, dating back to the Pentium III. That chip was first unveiled in 1999, during an era long before power consumption in consumer CPUs was considered a critical issue. At that time, Transmeta was barely a two-year-old company, with much of its operations conducted in secret, and with an original goal to produce Intel-compatible chips.

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The consumer edition of Windows Vista won’t be available in stores and outlets until at least January; but in the meantime, the big holiday push is proceeding on schedule, especially for the benefit of hardware manufacturers whose prospects for a cheerful Christmas depend on at least the promise of Vista.

One week from Monday, Microsoft and Intel will jointly kick off a 23 city tour of North America, starting in Miami and ending on December 14 in Seattle. The so-called “Ready 2 Rock Road Show” is ostensibly geared toward channel partners – those in the business of selling their equipment.

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It's difficult to place a positive spin on an economic downturn, but hardware analysis firm iSuppli has given it a good shot this week. There's enough positive momentum in semiconductor sales, the firm now says, for it to escape the hiccups that are in front of it. But yesterday, it adjusted the size of that "hiccup" a little higher; and on Monday, it downgraded its near-term market rating for both DRAM and NAND flash memory segments.

The annual rate of growth in semiconductor sales, iSuppli now says, has been adjusted down a tick to 7.8% from 7.9%, to $255.7 billion for 2006. That momentum will drive the market to higher growth over 2007, by a 10% annual rate, but that growth will slow to 2.6% by 2009.

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At a WiMAX technology conference this morning in Boston, representatives from Nokia told the press that consumers should expect to see WiMAX capable mobile devices from Nokia sometime during 2008. This news came as the company rolled out a WiMAX-enabled version of its lightweight base station, previously used just for transmitting HSDPA and W-CDMA third-generation cellular signals.

Nokia's timing is pretty much on target, since mobile carrier Sprint Nextel announced last August it intends to roll out a 4 Mbps WiMAX network by the fourth quarter of next year, as a complement to its existing W-CDMA and EV-DO services.

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The fallout from companies tainted by recent SEC investigations into inappropriate stock options grants escalated from a steady rain to a heavy downpour this morning, as news of the resignation of CNET Networks' CEO and Founder, Shelby Bonnie, followed almost immediately on the heels of news of McAfee's CEO's resignation, and the ouster of that company's president.

An internal review of CNET accounting practices, which concluded today, revealed another worst-case scenario: Grants of backdated options took place as far back as 1996, though they may have ceased in 2003. Still, the company's history for the past decade will have to be rewritten.

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Playing out what could be considered the worst-case scenario for corporations caught in the midst of a multi-company SEC probe into corporate accounting for possibly backdated options grants, the executive ranks of security software provider McAfee are being purged in a massive company reboot.

Former Borland CEO Dale Fuller is the new interim CEO of McAfee today, after the resignation of six-year veteran chairman/CEO George Samenuk, and the outright termination of the company’s president, Kevin Weiss.

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Intel has already soundly beaten AMD to the goal post with regard to 65-nanometer production, with its Core 2 Duo processors outperforming AMD's at the top of the CPU product line, for the first time in years. But AMD's comeback may be in full swing, as that company's transition from 90nm to 65nm appears to be in overdrive, in a move that may make or break the company's fortunes.

Last week, the Taiwanese electronics industry daily DigiTimes reported that sources at Chartered Semiconductor, which operates one of AMD's outsourced foundries in Singapore, had revealed it was given the go-ahead by AMD to ramp up production to 90% 65nm by the end of next year.

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In at least a partial victory for the plaintiff in one of the most heated intellectual property disputes in the history of telecommunications, US International Trade Commission Judge Charles Bullock ruled that defendant Qualcomm did indeed infringe upon one of the three Broadcom patents under contention.

Specifically, the judge ruled that imported equipment containing Qualcomm chipsets infringe upon Broadcom’s critical “ 983” patent, which specifies a portable communications device with transceivers for both wired and wireless networks.

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In what sources are describing as the first serious attempt by a major electronics firm to bridge the arguably short technology gap between Blu-ray and HD DVD, NEC Electronics revealed to the Japanese trade publication AV Watch today that it is now shipping an LSI chipset that incorporates all the logic necessary for manufacturers to produce either HD DVD or Blu-ray players and recorders.

Naturally, this has led many to speculate that a hybrid high-definition disc player/recorder for both formats could be in the works. But at present, the number of consumer electronics manufacturers committed to producing such a device is zero, with the recent waffling by LG Electronics over whether it actually said it would produce a hybrid player by the end of the year.

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In a sworn statement last September for IBM's defense in its ongoing battle with UNIX patent-holder SCO Group, BayStar Capital Management founder Lawrence Goldfarb stated a Microsoft senior vice president -- who since left the company in a separate controversy -- approached him with an offer to "backstop," or guarantee, a $50 million investment in UNIX patent-holder SCO Group. The news was revealed on Sunday by the technology law blog Groklaw.

"Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO," stated Goldfarb. The person negotiating on Microsoft's behalf, according to the statement, was then-senior vice president for corporate development and strategy, Richard Emerson.

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