Of the three major telecommunications companies sent questionnaires two weeks ago by leaders of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, only Verizon answered in detail, with AT&T and Qwest citing pending lawsuits as their reason for declining. Those questionnaires were intended to determine these companies' understanding of federal law as it was explained to them, and how they believe they're complying with the law, in cases where national security officials seek private customer data without a court order.

Currently, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permits information from communications of non-US citizens to be collected without court order. However, in recent years, the Dept. of Justice and the National Security Agency have made numerous requests for customer data citing FISA as legal foundation, even though the citizenship status of individuals being investigated is unclear.

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While Sony is remaining cagey about whether it will bring the 40GB PlayStation 3 to the United States, Target appears to have let the cat out of the bag. The company's inventory systems are reporting the lower-cost model will arrive on October 28 with a price tag of $399 USD.

Sony has already launched the 40GB PS3 in Europe and Japan, which will replace the phased out 60GB model. The company hopes the lower $399 price will drive sales by those who aren't willing to pony up $599 for the high-end model. But the low cost comes with a big caveat: the 40GB PS3 does not offer backward compatibility for PS2 games, nor the memory card port.

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Apple has silently dropped the price of its DRM-free iTunes Plus tracks, which come as 256kbps AAC. Instead of $1.29, the tracks will cost the same as standard songs with DRM: 99-cents. The move is seemingly in response to Amazon's launch of its DRM-free music store that sells 256kbps MP3s for between 89 cents to 99 cents each.

Although the iTunes Plus songs were individually $1.29, Apple usually sold full iTunes Plus albums at the same price as their DRM counterpart. The company is expected to make an official announcement Wednesday, along with bulking up its DRM-free offering with additional independent labels.

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Napster announced today that it plans to relaunch its Web-based platform, which allows subscribers access to their music from anywhere, shifting the focus of the service away from its standalone software.

Most subscribers currently use Napster's desktop application to access the music database. The Web-based model will allow users more freedom to stream their tracks anywhere they are connected to the Internet.

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Apple has finally set a date for the next release of its Mac OS X operating system, said to include some 300 new features.

Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" will go on sale through Apple retail stores and resellers on October 26 at 6:00pm local time. Additionally, the company will accept pre-orders for the new OS beginning Tuesday.

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Possibly sensing that it would be an uphill battle, Microsoft said Tuesday that it planned to drop its appeal of an anti-trust ruling in South Korea.

The Redmond company had lost a similar appeal in Europe in mid-September. A request to dismiss its appeal was sent to the Seoul High Court last week.

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Switzerland has announced its upcoming national election results will be encrypted with an allegedly "unbreakable" code.

While such claims are always invitations to opposition, this method of encryption essentially self-destructs the key in the event of an attempted interception.

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In its regular prediction of future milestones at the opening of a major annual magnetic recording conference in Tokyo, Hitachi raised the bar yet again: This time, the company is promising to reach the one terabit per square inch milestone commercially by 2011. First, that might be too late to beat its competition; second, Hitachi may have to show more proof it can reach that goal even that soon.

The goal is a fairly simple one, and sometimes it has to be simple in order for engineers to be able to fathom all that's required of them bending the laws of physics to reach it. In the case of magnetic disk drive technologies, the problem is being able to store data magnetically in a space smaller than electrons themselves should typically allow for.

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Analysis from NPD indicates that the iPhone has had the biggest negative effect to carriers T-Mobile and Alltel, and to phone manufacturer Palm.

The survey was taken by a sample of 13,000 consumers who had purchased a phone over a 30-day period. 200 of these purchased an iPhone.

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Just as in the microcomputer industry, the key to widespread dissemination of a design is mass production of its underlying technology. Standard chipsets are what make varieties of motherboards possible; and in the mobile phone realm, where form factors are much smaller, miniaturization demands that more basic features get crammed onto a single chip.

Today, Broadcom announced it appears to have overcome the myriad of timing issues associated with such amalgamation, and has begun sampling a system-on-a-chip (SoC) that combines all the underlying communication features phone manufacturers demand along with HSDPA/HSUPA high-speed data transfer.

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California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed on Saturday a bill that would have put in place strict laws governing data privacy, arguing that the costs to comply with the law would have put unnecessary strain on small businesses.

Supporters of the legislation said its intent was to ensure consumer data was adequately protected from potential security breaches. It would have been more strict than current polices put in place by the payment and credit card industries.

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Attempting to bolster its underdeveloped Web presence, Discovery Communications Inc. today announced its intention to acquire HowStuffWorks.com.

The site, founded in 1998 by a former NC State professor and currently owned by The Convex Group out of Atlanta, GA, USA, will be purchased by Discovery for $250 million.

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Although its RAZR handsets set a new standard in mobile phone design and sold tens of millions of units, Motorola's dirty little secret is beginning to impact sales: its horrible phone user interface. The company is now endeavoring to resolve this by partnering with Sony Ericsson on building an open platform for phones.

Motorola has agreed to acquire a 50 percent stake in UI Holdings BV, the parent company of UIQ Technology AB, which is owned by Sony Ericsson. UIQ makes a phone interface platform based on Symbian utilized in many Sony Ericsson phones, but thus far it has failed to catch on with developers like Nokia's own Symbian-based Series60 and Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

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In yet another snub to anti-piracy efforts, infamous Swedish BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay has taken over IFPI.com, a domain formerly owned by the recording industry group by the same name. IFPI, previously known as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, pushes for anti-piracy enforcement in 75 countries.

The Pirate Bay -- the biggest BitTorrent tracker in the world -- claims someone gave them the domain name, which they plan to use to promote the International Federation of Pirates Interests. IFPI, which operates at IFPI.org and has previously pursued legal action against The Pirate Bay, could ask ICANN to force the group to turn over the domain.

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DirecTV said Monday it had expanded its channel lineup to 72 high-definition channels for those subscribed to all of its premium lineup, part of an effort to offer customers 100 channels in HD by the end of this year. Even without the premium HD channels, of which there are about a dozen, the company's lineup far exceeds that of any other provider at the moment.

The standard HD package costs $9.99 per month, and includes those HD channels that are tied to their particular package. For an additional $4.99 monthly, the company would give access to all non-premium HD channels in its lineup. All HD packages also include local channels in HD where available, the company said.

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