The proposed tightening of Internet censorship in Australia is now in its first phase.

Australia's Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will soon be conducting tests of ISP-based filters in Tasmania before a nationwide field test deployment takes place.

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Apparently dissatisfied with its as-of-yet unprofitable agreement with Sprint, Qwest is reportedly looking elsewhere.

Qwest signed an exclusivity agreement with Sprint, where it bought wholesale buckets of minutes and then resold them to customers. However, the terms also prevented it from offering the latest handsets, which in turn crippled its ability to attact new customers.

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The message all this week from Microsoft has been one of openness, sharing with clients, and even global responsibility -- even in the wake of a new round of EC fines. This morning, the message continued into the online services space.

The communications ability of Microsoft's MSN messaging networks has been open for other IM tools to use for some time, but today, the company is making available the methodology for a concept it has been demonstrating to developers -- albeit in the prototype stage -- for over two years: integrating the ability to invoke Windows Live communications through Web applications.

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While the high-definition format war may be over, those Blu-ray owners wanting to buy Shrek and Bee Movie are out of luck for the time being.

DreamWorks Animation said yesterday it still had an exclusive deal with Toshiba to distribute its movies on HD DVD, and until Toshiba gave it the go-ahead, it would not begin offering movies in Blu-ray. DreamWorks will be releasing Bee Movie in March on HD DVD.

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The question of the day is, with Visual Studio 2008 already happening and SQL Server 2008 maybe not happening for real for at least another six months, just how many "heroes" will be "happening here" at the Windows Server 2008 launch gala?

LOS ANGELES (BetaNews) - At the front gate of the Nokia Theater outside the Convention Center here this morning, one of the Nokia workers asked me, "So where are the heroes?"

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It looks like Microsoft's troubles in the EU are far from over, with a $1.35 billion ($899 million euros) penalty being rendered on Wednesday. The fine follows two new cases launched in the past month against the Redmond company.

The fine is in addition to a 497 million euro ($613 million) fine first leveled against Microsoft in March 2004 for bundling Media Player into the Windows operating system, and failing to supply interoperability information to competitors.

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A video circulated online depicting white students exploiting black workers at a South African University has elicited national outrage and near riots today.

Filmed at South Africa's University of the Free State, the video features a group of white students going through Jackass-esque events with members of the maintenance staff, who all appear to be willingly participating, chugging beer, engaging in sports, and ultimately consuming what appears to be chili in which one of the students urinated.

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This week's introduction of the System z10 server was IBM's most significant mainframe-related event since 1974, said Steve Mills, senior VP and group executive of the IBM Software Group. Yet did attendees at the launch in New York City agree? Some did, but others weren't so sure.

"Until now, a lot of people wouldn't even think about consolidating Unix servers on a mainframe. The cost just seemed too high," concurred one user, who manages the z10's predecessor -- the z9 -- in his job at a big international bank.

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A 2004 challenge on the grounds that DirecTV might make News Corp. too great a media power, was denied yesterday. As a result, ironically, News Corp. can now be a lesser power, surrendering DirecTV to Liberty Media.

Not long after News Corp. acquired a controlling interest in direct broadcast satellite provider DirecTV, chairman Rupert Murdoch changed his mind on the viability of the deal. For DBS to be a viable product against "triple-play" options from cable providers, Murdoch needed upstream Internet frequency, and found himself uncharacteristically outbid for it.

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Access to YouTube has been restored in Pakistan after the country ordered local Internet providers to unblock the site. The move comes two days after a mistake by one of the telecommunications companies that caused it to identify itself as the fastest route to YouTube, breaking the site around the world.

The problem was corrected after briefly knocking out access to YouTube on Sunday, but the ban within the country remained in effect until Tuesday. While other videos featuring Dutch politician Geert Wilders will still be available to Pakistani users, the offending video that led to the blocking order has been removed by YouTube parent Google.

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With the System z10, a new mainframe rolled out today in New York City, IBM is hoping that the mainframe platform will take giant steps in a resurgence already under way for a number of years now.

"This is a screaming machine," contended Steve Mills, who heads up the IBM Software Group, during a press and customer event in Manhattan.

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As selected testers first received invitations from Microsoft yesterday, numerous reports speculated as to the nature of the IE 8 Beta 1 test. Late last night, Microsoft sorted out those reports for BetaNews.

In a response to a BetaNews inquiry, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the Beta 1 testing process for Internet Explorer 8 has begun. To help distinguish it from the public preview process, in which prospective customers are given peeks at how the finished product might work, Microsoft officially calls this a "Techbeta."

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A major outage to Microsoft Windows Live services has left an unknown number of users unable to access MSN Messenger, Hotmail and other services since earlier today. Progress is being made on resolving the situation, the company says.

Initially believed to be an incident isolated to the east coast of the United States, users from the west coast and several other nations also reported they have been unable to access any Windows Live services since sometime around 6:30 a.m. EST.

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A federal court that hears patent appeals ordered a lower court to reconsider damages to be paid to a Guatemalan developer over technologies in the Microsoft Office suite.

Carlos Amado originally sued Microsoft in 2003, saying that his technologies surrounding databases and spreadsheets were misappropriated in several versions of Office.

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With music sales on its iTunes Store continuing to grow and sales of physical CDs continuing to fall, Apple has become the second largest music retailer in the United States, only trailing retail giant Wal-Mart.

The number-two position was bestowed on Apple by research firm NPD Group, which counted the music sold during 2007. Because iTunes sells music as individual tracks while stores like Wal-Mart do not, the firm counted every 12 tracks as a single CD sold.

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