According to APC by early 2008, Microsoft will oblige its army of box-shifers to ship Vista and ditch XP.

The mag talked to Frank Luburic, a ThinkPad product manager at Lenovo, who said: "The OEM version of XP Professional goes next January... At that point, they'll have no choice."

The market reaction to Vista has been luke-warm to say the least and computer buyers are quite happy buying XP machines, thank you very much.

But, since Microsoft rules the desktop, the only real competition there is to Vista is coming from itself. And that'll have to stop.

Far from being a "force for good", according to the UK's education minister Alan Johnson, Wikipedia is unreliable and "broken beyond repair", co-founder Larry Sanger said.

The Times reported Sanger's remarks in the wake of a speech Johnson made to teachers yesterday. Johnson said Wikipedia allows people to access info which formerly would require expensive subscriptions to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and the like.

But Sanger said the community was "often dysfunctional", the content was unreliable and it had serious management problems.

Mind you, Sanger has something of an axe to grind as he's just launched his own encyclopaedia, citizendium.org, which will be monitored by boffins.

Hackers appear to have figured out how to access one of the crucial HD DVD encryption keys without having to authorise the data - potentially rendering the latest attempt to block such activity useless.

The crack, posted on the Xboxhacker website, uses a standard, unmodified Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD drive to hand over a disc's Volume ID without ensuring AACS has authenticated it first. Since no authentication is performed, even if the Volume ID has been rejected by the AACS Licensing Authority - the organisation that maintains the copy-protection system - it can still be used.

The crack doesn't facilitate copying per se, but it does appear to make it possible to play back copies as if they were the real thing. Until now, this has required the drive's firmware to be patched.

"TG Publishing, the publisher of Tom's Hardware Guide, has been sold. We expect the deal to close this month, and will make an official announcement at the appropriate time. We believe that there are some very exciting times ahead for the company, and that our readers have a lot to look forward to. I hope that I can share our expectations with you shortly."

A rumour is doing the rounds that long established hardware site, Tom's Hardware, has been sold for a sum of between $15 million to $20 million.

Odds are that Patti Santangelo, the New York mother who was the first RIAA victim to make a determined stand against the Big 4, helped to no small extent by p2pnet readers who put their money where their mouths were, contributing thousands of dollars towards her legal costs, has won her battle to clear her name and show up the Big 4 for the bullies they are.

She and her lawyer, Jordan Glass, have signed and submitted a stipulation to dismiss with prejudice the case lodged against her by the RIAA, clearly taking their cue from the language of US federal district court judge Colleen McMahon's response to Glass's letter of March 31.

"I don't know how other parents are managing it without money. That's why the RIAA is picking on people without money, because people with money can beat them. But now that the other defendants have my case to refer to, maybe that will help them save money and have more power to win."

An update posted for Intervideo WinDVD 8 confirms that it's AACS key has been possibly revoked. WinDVD 8 is the software which had it's device key compromised, allowing unfettered access to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content, resulting in HD movies being made available via many torrent sites online. This is possibly the first known key revocation which has taken place, and little is known of the actual process used for key revocation. According to the release, 'Please be aware that failure to apply the update will result in AACS-protected HD DVD and BD playback being disabled,' which pretty much confirms that the key revocation has already taken place for all newly released Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs.

The RIAA has announced that the House Education and Labor committee is considering an amendment, HR1689, to the Higher Education Act of 1965. The proposal would allocate federal education funds to anti-piracy measures on college campuses. Most concerning is the bill's wording. It's claimed that the proposal would "save telecommunications bandwidth costs." In other words, the government will fund private packet filtering and preferential bandwidth allocation. "The Higher Education Act (HEA) generally allows schools to spend the money they receive only on certain prescribed areas such as financial aid grants and Pell loans. The new bill would allow that money to be used for more things, but does not contain a request for additional funding. Whether schools would be interested in using a limited pool of federal money to police student file-swapping remains to be seen."

New solar cells developed by Massey University don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power.

"Within two to three years we will have developed a prototype for real applications. "The technology could be sold off already, but it would be a shame to get rid of it now."

Dr Campbell said that unlike silicone-based solar cells, the dye- based cells are still able to operate in low-light conditions, making them ideal for cloudy climates.

Professor Partridge said the next step was to take the dyes and incorporate them in roofing materials, tinted window glass and wall panels where they could generate electricity for home owners.

For years there have been stories about people getting their unlimited Verizon EVDO Wireless accounts terminated because of excessive data usage, but Verizon never explicitly said that there is a limit. Now if you dive into the terms of the Unlimited Data Service plan they have put a section in that specifically states that anything over 5GB of data usage in a one month period is considered prima facie evidence that you must be downloading movies, and you will be cut off.

The closest thing the Internet has to a governing body seems to want the same kind of immunity from national laws that the International Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee have enjoyed for decades.

The Bush administration doesn't appear to like the idea of ICANN becoming an independent international organization. In fact, instead of letting ICANN slip further out of its grasp, the administration seems to be tightening its grip on the Marina del Ray, Calif.-based group.

An August 2006 analysis from ICANN makes it clear that the Swiss framework for such international groups would be an especially attractive one. Another telling sentence in the new report says that "ICANN's headquarters may remain in the U.S.," as opposed to a flat statement saying it will remain here.