Adware company Zango has voluntarily withdrawn its lawsuit against security software company PC Tools, which Zango accused of illegally removing its software from users' PCs without their express permission. The move follows a court's refusal to grant Zango a temporary restraining order.

The company had asked a court to prevent PC Tools' Spyware Doctor software from detecting and classifying Zango as potentially harmful, but a judge ruled it was "unlikely that the Plaintiff will be able to prove that the Defendant's software was unfair or deceptive."

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A San Diego, Calif.-based company has released a new monitor for gamers that would allow them to play games in three dimensions.

Built by iZ3D, the 22-inch widescreen monitors would require a special set of polarized glasses to make the effect work. The display is compatible with Windows XP and Vista, and works on the newest graphics accelerators and processors.

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Defending its actions in disclosing the identities of Chinese dissidents, Yahoo on Monday said it acted with Chinese law in doing so.

The company has been roundly criticized for its involvement in several jailings, including journalists Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao. Both were accused of using Yahoo's services to distribute subversive material about the Chinese government.

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What may eventually be considered one of the most useful and welcome new features for admins has finally been officially released by Microsoft. Today, the company announced that System Center Configuration Manager has officially "released to manufacturing." A 120-day trial evaluation version appeared on Microsoft TechNet this morning.

SCCM is the replacement for Systems Management Server 2003 R2, and its purpose is to enable an administrator from a central location to manage and configure operating systems remotely. This new version makes feasible an innovative method of deployment, which is actually already under way for Windows Vista: You can build your own "distribution image" of an operating system, complete with the applications and settings specific to your organization, and distribute it through your network for remote installation.

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A curious network performance reduction noticed by many Windows Vista users of the 2CPU forum that became the talk of Slashdot last week has been identified as having been caused not by DRM, as Slashdot users expected, but by a curious prioritization "feature" of Vista that's intentionally biased toward Media Player at the expense of network and system resources.

The effects of this feature were first revealed last June, as BetaNews reported, by Microsoft security engineer Mark Russinovich.

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Saying it wants to protect user privacy, TorrentSpy said Monday that it will no longer allow visitors from the United States to use the site. The BitTorrent search engine's servers are located in the Netherlands, and it falls under the jurisdiction of the European Union, as do the copyright laws that govern it.

The decision to ban US users from the site was not due to any compulsion from the courts, it assured. "Rather it arises out of an uncertain legal climate in the United States regarding user privacy and the apparent tension between US and European Union Internet privacy laws," the company said.

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A global airline body has placed its last order for paper tickets, meaning that by June 1, 2008 the industry will complete the transition to an electronic system.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) represents approximately 240 airlines that operate all but 6 percent of the world's international flights. By ending paper ticketing, the airlines save $9 per passenger and 50,000 trees a year.

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One of the most ambitious new features ever to be built into an x86 motherboard is now publicly available: a hypervisor-based computer that runs both the operating system and its underlying BIOS under the control of a virtual machine monitor.

Underneath these physical and virtual layers is Intel's latest and boldest implementation of the Trusted Computing platform - the highly anticipated, and in some circles dreaded, LaGrande platform, now called Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). It is quite literally a computer that provides the entire universe for another computer, replacing the BIOS with a radically advanced underlying system capable of detecting incursion at the deepest levels.

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It's no secret that Microsoft employs individuals that attempt to bypass the security restrictions built into its software products in order to make them safer, but the company has rarely publicized this fact. That's changing with a new Web log called hackers @ microsoft.

The Redmond company plans to utilize the blog to introduce its "white hat hackers" and show people what they do for Microsoft, although in keeping with tradition, those mentioned on the blog will likely go by their pseudonyms. "At his or her core, a true hacker is someone who is curious and wants to learn how systems work. This can and of course at Microsoft is done in an ethical, legal manner," techjunkie writes in the first posting on the site.

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While some may have left it for dead, the owners of AllofMP3 said Monday that they do plan to resume service. "The service will be resumed in the foreseeable future," a blog post from the company read. "We are doing our best at the moment to ensure that all our users can use their accounts, top up balance and order music."

The announcement of the return of AllofMP3 follows a decision by the Russian courts to throw out a case against the former head of Mediaservices (parent company of the site) Denis Kvasov. Although the record industry has vowed to appeal, they might be fighting an uphill battle as the courts have ruled Kvasov can't be sued under current laws.

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Sony debuted its first combination HDTV/PC including Blu-ray technology on Monday, although the price tag still remains rather high.

The Vaio LT HD PC/TV is a 22-inch widescreen "all-in-one" display. The system supports CableCARD technology that allows the user to view digital cable channels without the need for a separate cable box.

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Microsoft said over the weekend that an issue with its Windows Genuine Advantage validation systems -- which were causing verified systems to fail and lose access to features -- had been fixed.

"I'd encourage anyone who received a validation failure since Friday evening to visit this site now; after successfully revalidating, any affected system should be rebooted to ensure that genuine-only features are restored," Windows Vista product manager Nick White said.

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Yahoo on Monday dropped the beta tag from its revamped webmail service, just a few months after Microsoft began rolling out its new Windows Live Hotmail. Like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail's upgrade offers a new desktop application-like interface using AJAX, but customers can choose to keep the "Classic" look.

Along with unlimited storage, new features in Yahoo Mail include an integrated RSS reader and instant messaging, along with built-in SMS text messaging support. Yahoo is targeting this feature at parents, who can quickly type a message on their computer and send it to their child's cell phone. Another addition in the final release is shortcut links, which appear in an e-mail to link to useful information like maps and calendars. The new Yahoo Mail is available to users in the United States, Canada, India and the Philippines.

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As officials from all three major companies involved confirmed to the press during the overnight hours in North America, global #3 PC manufacturer Acer has reached an agreement to acquire Gateway, America's #3 manufacturer, for $710 million.

And in a possibly contingent move, Gateway will use some of that immediate cash infusion to exercise its right to preclude Lenovo from acquiring Packard Bell from California investor Lap Shun Hui, who purchased it from NEC just last year.

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Nokia said Friday that it had reached an agreement with Matsushita Battery to cover costs related to its August 14 recall of BL-5C batteries manufactured by the company for about four dozen Nokia phone models between December 2005 and November 2006. About 100 incidents of overheating have been reported, which is due to a short circuit occurring during charging. No serious injuries or property damage have yet been made public.

"The safety of our customers and the reliability and quality of our products are our top priorities," said Robert Andersson, head of Nokia Customer and Market Operations in a statement. "We are pleased with the good cooperation between Nokia and Matsushita. Together we aim to serve consumers in the best possible manner and minimize the inconvenience this issue could cause them."

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