We're starting to get bills for the iPhone here at Ars, and while many of us have had smartphones for some time, we've never seen a bill like this.

One of our bills is a whopping 52 pages long, and my own bill is 34 pages long. They're printed on both sides, too.

The AT&T bill itemizes your data usage whenever you surf the Internet via EDGE, even if you're signed up for the unlimited data plan. AT&T also goes into an incredible amount of detail to tell you—well, almost nothing. For instance, I know that on July 27 at 3:21 p.m. I had some data use that, under the To/From heading, AT&T has helpfully listed as "Data Transfer." The Type of file? "Data." My total charge? $0.00.

Web search and Internet services company Google Inc. on Friday began selling expanded online storage, targeted for users with large picture, music or video file collections.

The prices range from $20 per year for 6 gigabytes of online storage; $75 per year for 25 gigabytes of storage; $250 per year for 100 gigabytes of storage; and $500 per year for 250 gigabytes of storage.

Google shares fell $2.08 to $512.65 in afternoon trading.

It's been astutely observed that the RIAA's "ex parte" campaign against "John Doe" college students seems to have run into much stormier waters than its campaign against regular folks. Discovery motions were thrown out by the judges in cases involving the University of New Mexico and the College of William and Mary, and motions to quash have been made by students at Boston University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of South Florida.

A hacker has found a way to crack digital rights management restrictions in major movies streamed by Netflix, allowing those with a valid account to save, copy and share the videos.

Using only Internet Explorer, Windows Media player, notepad and a program called FairUse4WM, a user by the name of DIzzIE offers step-by-step directions on Rorta, a message board for hackers.

The crack requires finding the URL of the video file, downloading it, obtaining the license key and then stripping out the DRM. The 14-step process sounds like a fair bit of work, even if the restrictions imposed by Netflix (requiring movies be consumed in a browser rather than on portable devices) are onerous. Translation: this hack is likely to appeal only to geeks.

Digital photographers could soon be able to erase unwanted elements in photos by using tools that scan for similar images in online libraries.

Research teams have developed an algorithm that uses sites like Flickr to help discover light sources, camera position and composition in a photo.

James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University have developed an algorithm to help people who want to remove bits of photographs.

"We want to generate objects of high realism while keeping the ease of use of a clip art library," said Jean-Francois Lalonde of Carnegie Mellon University who led the research.

An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers.

If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life as ice melts due to global warming. This is nothing to worry about, say experts, because the process has been going on for billions of years and the bugs are unlikely to cause human disease.

If true, however, Falkowski's findings could considerably extend the record for the oldest DNA frozen in ice. Last month, a team of researchers led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark announced that they had recovered DNA from the Greenland ice sheet that was up to 800,000 years old.

SoundExchange, which is a "non-profit" spinoff of the RIAA is supposed to be a neutral party, simply in charge of collecting certain royalties and distributing it to the artists. Of course, things aren't always the way they're supposed to be. After all, SoundExchange is famous for having trouble finding many of the musicians it's supposed to pay -- which isn't all that surprising since it gets to keep the money that goes unclaimed.

One thing clearly not on that list is building a PR campaign and lobbying Congress to expand its ability to collect royalties from other sources. However, Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired has discovered that's exactly what SoundExchange is doing, and it appears to be breaking the law.

A lawyer for SoundExchange then tries to explain the situation away by saying that the royalty money being used for lobbying was authorized to be used this way by SoundExchange members. That's like saying it's okay that they broke the law, because they gave themselves permission to break the law. Very convincing.

Undercover reporter Michelle Madigan (Associate Producer of NBC Dateline) got a little more than she bargained for when she tried to sneak in to DEFCON 2007 with hidden cameras to get someone to confess to a felony.

DEFCON organizers caught wind of this from undisclosed sources and casually contacted Madigan to see if she wanted official press credentials and a press badge to cover DEFCON. Reporters in the pressroom were then fully briefed on the situation before the "spot the undercover reporter game" so that they could cover the event.

Madigan was apparently trying to do a shock piece for NBC Dateline to show middle America how criminal underground hackers had descended on DEFCON Las Vegas to learn tricks of the trade and how Federal Agents were tracking them down.

DEFCON official "Priest" also had reason to believe that that Madigan was planning to out uncover federal agents attending DEFCON and expressed some serious concern about the safety and privacy of those agents. Because of this, staffers used this to lure Madigan to the room where they planned to out her instead in front of DEFCON attendees in the "spot the undercover reporter" game but Madigan bolted from the scene before her photo was put up on the projector.

The sad part of this story is that Madigan was given every opportunity to get a press pass and get access to any of the speakers and attendees above board. Even after the secret video taping she was offered a chance cover the rest of the conference with an official press badge.

This has not been a good week for e-voting companies. First came the report out of California that the security had problems on every machine tested by independent security experts, followed quickly by security experts finding problems with other machines in Florida.

Apparently all of the e-voting machines are vulnerable to malicious attacks that could "affect election outcomes." The report also points out: "An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual with temporary access to a single voting machine. The damage could be extensive -- malicious code could spread to every voting machine in polling places and to county election servers." This, of course, is what others have been saying for years, and which Diebold always brushes off.

Remember how Diebold had used the master password "1111" in their machines? Now their machines use hard-coded passwords like "diebold" and (I kid you not) "12345678." At some point, isn't it time for Diebold (and the other e-voting critics) to stand up and admit that their machines aren't secure and, in fact, were never secure?

In the past we've covered various stories of how author J.K. Rowling and her publisher have been needlessly aggressive in trying to enforce copyright claims dealing with Harry Potter.

The NY Times has an article that claims to be about copyright infringement and counterfeit Harry Potter books in China, but the details suggest it's really more about fan fiction. The article focuses almost entirely on non-authentic Harry Potter books, often written by fans, that are then sold to a Chinese market clamoring for more Harry Potter.

However, as Against Monopoly points out, this has apparently spurred greater interest in reading among kids, so of course Rowling's publishers are looking into stopping these books from being sold. You can certainly understand Rowling's worry about being wrongly associated with works that she had no part in writing... but you have to wonder if she's perhaps missing an opportunity by simply sending in the lawyers.