Another user of the Doom9 Forum, whose members have been actively working to develop a system to subvert AACS copy protection, has apparently discovered in a memory dump a legitimate device key - the cryptographic element licensed to components in order to obtain the volume key automatically from high-definition HD DVD discs, according to a post yesterday. The source of the key appears to be CyberLink PowerDVD; and another forum user was able to use a published AACS formula to validate its authenticity.

At this rate, it may only be an academic matter before programmers there refine a method by which an independent program uses this or some other device key to decrypt and even play high-def content on computers, without the intervention of a licensed program.

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Faced with continuing criticism that is increasingly tarnishing the 150-year old company's reputation, Diebold may be preparing to offload its electronic voting unit, say analysts quoted by the Associated Press

What to critics may appear as the company's main business, in reality is a unit that only marginally adds to Diebold's bottom line. For much of the company's history, Diebold's focus has been on providing safes and automated teller machine services.

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In a move that could signify more trouble for Microsoft's seemingly confused Windows Live group that has seen a number of products revert back to MSN branding, Corporate Vice President Blake Irving is resigning his post, according to Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley.

Foley writes that sources say Irving, who handled the behind-the-scenes infrastructure for Windows Live, will likely remain at Microsoft for several months before parting ways with the company. Irving joined Microsoft in 1992 and has worked on the Redmond company's Messenger and e-mail products, along with its popular blogging platform, Windows Live Spaces.

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dotMobi, the company tasked with managing the .mobi top-level domain name, announced Monday that over 400,000 registrations have been placed since the TLD launched in October 2006. In comparison, only 100,000 .com domains were registered in the first ten years.

The company cited a growing desire from consumers to access Web sites on their mobile phones as the reason proclaiming .mobi's success. However, mobile browsing is still largely in its infancy, with disparate devices and software applications providing vastly different experiences. dotMobi hopes to fix that, and is providing tools such as a site builder and analyzer to aid developers.

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The argument that next-generation gaming platforms would expand the video game industry got some added support Monday, as Nielsen reported that it had found video game penetration had increased 18 percent over the past two years.

In the fourth quarter of 2006, 45.7 million households owned a video game consoles, or about 41.1 percent. This compares with about 39.1 percent in 2005, and 35.2 percent in 2004. During this same period, the number of total television households increased 1.6 percent.

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2:30 pm March 5, 2007 – During comments to analysts during a Morgan Stanley analysts’ meeting in San Francisco this morning, Pacific Time, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz was uncharacteristically, selectively vague about the status of his company. While he maintained his now-trademark optimism, calling the current fiscal quarter a “blip” with regard to performing less than expected, his fogginess in reference to the second quarter and beyond was so unlike Ruiz that it could potentially draw negative attention to itself for that reason alone.

More about Ruiz’ comments follow our original story from this morning:

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Hoping to quell customer unease over its planned merger, both Sirius and XM issued open letters to their customers, assuring them that all radios will continue to work well after the merger, and that current customers will not see their monthly fee raised.

In the weeks following the proposed merger announcement, both analysts and customers of either company began to speculate that rates would increase and that newer radio models compatible with the merged company's programming will replace current ones.

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AOL pushed an update Monday to the beta site for its webmail product, code-named "Cayman." Changes in this refresh focused on enhancements to the overall look and feel of the application, as well as performance improvements. A more streamlined interface has been introduced that will allow for quicker navigation, along with the option to either read messages inline or pop-out as they currently do.

In addition, updates were made to the Side Panel feature, allowing the user to easily e-mail and IM contacts with just one click, as well as view upcoming events and to-do items. AOL said it planned to add more functionality as the beta progresses. The new version is available for testing from the AOL Beta site.

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Just over one year after Research in Motion put a patent infringement lawsuit behind it, in the interest of setting forth confidently into the future, the future came back to bite the company where it hurts.

Finding itself amid a wave of technology companies under investigation in both the US and Canada for granting backdated options without reporting their values as charges, RIM announced this morning it may have to restate prior years' earnings up to 2003 to the tune of USD$220 million, with additional restatement of perhaps $5 million per year thereafter.

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VMware has launched a beta of product that allows IT administrators to centrally manage and control virtual machines installed on PCs on their network.

Called VMware ACE, the application would allow the administrator to create a PC environment, package it into a virtual machine, and then deploy it to any managed or unmanaged endpoint.

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Microsoft Office program manager Brian Jones, whose work has centered around the Open XML document format, now says the so-called format war with OpenDocument is officially over. The winner, he says, is both.

Jones made the statement in a blog post over the weekend following the release by Novell of an Open XML translator for OpenOffice. The plug-in enables the free, open source productivity suite to open documents created in the Microsoft format, as well as saving OpenDocument (ODF) files into Open XML.

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Microsoft kicked off its 'Dream-Build-Play' contest at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, offering $10,000 and the opportunity to have their game published in the Xbox Live Arcade to one lucky developer. While the grand prize is the money and distribution of the game, over $40,000 worth of prizes will be given out to 20 winners in total.

Microsoft, Alienware, AMD, Autodesk, and Softimage have all offered prizes for contest winners, the company said in a statement. To participate, the developer must use either Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express, or the third-party GarageGames Torque X platform. Submissions are due by July 2, and a winner will be announced August 13 at Microsoft Gamefest 2007.

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Microsoft plans to allow Xbox Live Arcade games to use more space, announcing it had increased the official size limit from 50 to 150 megabytes. In addition, the company also announced a larger memory card with a capacity of 512MB.

The unit will be priced at $49.99 USD, and comes preloaded with the Xbox Live Arcade game "Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved" for a limited time. The original 64MB version will drop in price to $29.99 USD.

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US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced today that states will be given an additional two years past the original May 11, 2008 deadline to comply with the directives of the controversial Real ID Act. Originally enacted into law in 2005, the Act contains many contentious directives, such as state agencies scanning of personal documents into a nationally-accessible database, giving a uniform appearance to each state's personal IDs, and implementing RFID tagging.

Today, in announcing the new deadline of December 31, 2009, Sec. Chertoff stressed that the process of tightening identification security strictly involves common sense.

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UK-based EMI, the world's third largest record label, has officially rejected a $4.1 billion takeover offer from the world's fourth largest label, Warner Music. EMI on Friday held a board meeting to discuss the "non-binding proposal" and decided it was not good for shareholders.

"The board concluded that it is not in the best interests of EMI shareholders to entertain a preconditional offer which would entail prolonged regulatory uncertainty and unacceptable operational risk at a critical time for the company," EMI said in a statement. Such a deal would have a hard time winning the approval of European regulators.

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