It's a very quiet ending for one of the important antitrust cases in the history of the software industry, as justices were apparently satisfied that a decision in Novell's favor on the WordPerfect matter was justified.

If Microsoft had one last chance to redeem itself after last October's decision in a 2004 court case brought against it by Novell, it was to get just four US Supreme Court justices to sign on to its writ of certiorari, or "cert petition." Would they please hear its case for an appeal? This morning, the high court dismissed the petition without even a comment.

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The search engine has provided some statistics of activity on its site from its first two weeks, and it shows that the company may have the upper hand on bringing social news to the mainstream.

According to Yahoo, about 16 million referrals have been sent to publishers -- who currently must be invited to have their content included in the service. Data also shows that the service is quickly catching up to Digg in terms of sending traffic.

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The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reports four of the country's major ISP collectives will forcibly cut Internet access to users who are caught using peer-to-peer technology, which they suspect is used mainly for unlicensed file-sharing.

The Telecom Service Association and Telecommunications Carriers Association are two of the four groups overseeing more than 1,000 ISPs in Japan. In theory, ISPs would receive the IP addresses of repeat offenders caught downloading and/or uploading copyrighted material. Each ISP would then be responsible for e-mailing the alleged offenders, warning them their Internet service could be cut if they do not stop file sharing.

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As the battle between NVidia and ATI for graphics supremacy seems focused more on the desktop and notebook markets, there's activity shaping up in the enterprise market as well, with a new device from ATI that's more about efficiency and multiplicity than 3D.

To help fill the void on the enterprise market, ATI last week quietly launched the FireMV 2260 graphics card for the enterprise market, hoping to give it a step up over NVidia's Quadro line.

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Google repeated its concern surrounding the proposed merger between Microsoft and Yahoo, saying it would threaten the openness of the Internet.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the comments to attendees as part of a press conference surrounding its efforts to bring cloud computing to Chinese universities. Obviously, reporters were anxious to get his take on the Microsoft-Yahoo tie-up.

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What wasn't good enough for Steve Jobs seems just fine for Microsoft, as it takes this opportunity to embed a version of Adobe's streaming video technology into its future mobile Web browsers, right alongside Adobe's rival Silverlight.

More and more, Microsoft is making a very visible effort to play nice, or at least nicer, by making room for its rivals alongside its own technology. This morning, it let Adobe hail the latest move rather than horde the megaphone, announcing that Adobe is licensing its Flash Lite mobile graphics platform to Microsoft for use, apparently, in a future mobile Web browser.

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While Hewlett-Packard has been re-launching its HP Labs, it's been keeping mum on its IdeaLab, a special department where HP researchers are working on technologies that may one day affect user experience in the future.

"These are research projects," an HP spokesperson told BetaNews today. "Some of them may never become products. Others can reach the public in a number of ways as HP products or in HP products or as technology we license to others. HP Labs works with a long time horizon than the product R&D groups."

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Microsoft officials told a French financial newspaper this week that a third generation player is due next year, along with the launch of the player in the European market.

Since its debut in late 2006, Microsoft's response to the iPod has been a US-only product. While there have been repeated rumors that launches in other markets were in the works, so far there has been no official confirmation until now.

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Rapt's technology will provide advertising yield and management solutions for users of Microsoft's Atlas Publisher Suite.

Microsoft Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) is a total ad management package, with tools for both the advertiser and publisher. The company says it makes the buying and selling of media easier across its network and other participating companies.

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Sources have confirmed to BetaNews that Facebook will be launching a multi-platform instant messaging service built into a user's profile page.

Based upon the open source Jabber platform, the IM service will be Web-based only, as Facebook doesn't currently have any software client developers, one source said. Blog TechCrunch, which first reported the news, says the IM service could be rolled out to the public next week, but our source wasn't given a specific date.

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Despite whatever took place behind closed doors in an unusual secret session of the US House yesterday, in open session today, the House passed its completely new version of the FISA Amendments bill this afternoon, by a vote of 213-197.

Speaking on behalf of the bill just prior to its passage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D - Calif.) took issue with President Bush's comments on the White House South Lawn yesterday, stating the Democrats' new version of the bill would, by eliminating legal protections for telecom companies, endanger the ongoing fight against terrorism.

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Search giant Google is certainly full of confidence when it comes to Android, arguing that it will have a much larger market than Apple's device.

Apple's small and tightly controlled market has often come up in criticism of that company's overall strategy. By locking itself to a small list of approved carriers, Apple may be hamstringing itself in sales.

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After the One Laptop Per Child project was sued by Nigerian keyboard manufacturer LANCOR in January for $20 million and an injunction on the OLPC XO was imposed in Nigeria, the case has taken root in US federal court.

The suit claims that OLPC used the Lagos Analysis Corp's (LANCOR) multilingual keyboard design in its low-cost XO laptop without permission. Through litigation in Nigerian court, the company has effectively crippled the OLPC project in that country.

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John Brennan, the executive in charge of PDF, Flash, and other platform technologies at Adobe, has resigned to join Silver Lake, a private equirty firm that has previously hired away the likes of Michael Capellas from HP and Ed Zander from Sun.

Brennan, who was previously senior VP of Adobe's Platform Division, is now a managing director at Silver Lake Sumeru, a new business which will invest in medium-sized technology companies.

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Second Life is looking for a second wind after a period of rapid growth. Is a new CEO the answer?

Philip Rosedale says that the reasons behind his resignation from the CEO position are due to the company needing a leader with more operational experience. He is not leaving the company altogether -- rather he will serve as chairman of the company after a successor is named.

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