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Federal antitrust regulators and Microsoft issued a joint status report Tuesday on the software giant's compliance with the 2003 final judgment on interoperability with third parties.

In the interim report, the parties focus on efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce the final judgments of the 2003 order and Microsoft's work on complying with those judgments.

The final settlement stems from a 2002 consent decree, which the court, in a ruling earlier this year, extended by two years. Under the settlement, Microsoft agreed to be subject to antitrust review for compliance of the consent decree, … Read more

Recently, I contacted U.S. Cellular and asked to review their Kyocera E1000. Since late spring is always a slow period for new cell releases, I can take the extra time to review handsets from smaller carriers. In the four and a half years I've been at CNET, I've examined a U.S. Cellular phone only a couple of times.

So while browsing through U.S. Cellular's lineup, the E1000 caught my eye. I fooled with this intriguing model at its unveiling at CTIA 2007, but my playtime lasted only a few minutes. And since I haven'… Read more

Only 20 percent of kids under 17 were able to buy "M"-rated games in the United States this year, according to a government report out Thursday. While parents' groups might like that percentage to be higher, the video game industry is probably pretty happy about the findings.

The Federal Trade Commission report studied kids' success at buying tickets to R-rated movies or purchasing R-rated DVDs, mature CDs, and M-rated games. In every case, the FTC found, the success rate had dropped over every previous year it conducted its study.

But nowhere was the drop sharper than with … Read more

CTIA 2008 is still one day away from its official start, but the news is already starting to trickle in. Motorola got a jump-start as it, as well as Alltel and U.S. Cellular, announced the addition of the Motorola Q9c to the carriers' line-ups, including a new lime-green version. Both providers will also offer a more traditional black version if you don't feel like getting too wild and crazy with your phone colors. (And how in the world did Moto settle on lime green?)

Looks aside, the Q9c for Alltel and U.S. Cellular is much like the … Read more

Universities--they are one of America's growing exports.

The University of California at Berkeley is signing a deal with the government of Saudi Arabia to help the country build an engineering graduate school there, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Under the alliance, the mechanical engineering department at Berkeley will collaborate on research and help recruit faculty for a graduate department that will be part of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (mascot unknown). The graduate department will accept male and female students and open in 2009.

In turn, Berkeley will receive millions, according to the Chronicle. It … Read more

U.S. law often comes down hard on price fixing. That's why a magazine story in October about efforts to create a music subscription site potentially backed by the top four music labels may have sounded alarms in Washington.

Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment have received requests for information from the U.S. Department of Justice about a proposed music site called Total Music. The DOJ interest comes after an October BusinessWeek story that said Doug Morris, Universal's CEO, pitched an idea for a subscription site to at least two of his three main competitors, … Read more

It's hardly surprising that China Mobile can figure out about where its subscribers are when the phone is on (or when the battery's in). This sort of technology is standard in developed mobile networks, and it's fueling a wave of business innovation and "locative technology."

So why was it so shocking to an AFP reporter when China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou told an audience at the World Economic Forum that "we know who you are, but also where you are"? Will at Imagethief has already made the alarmist journalism argument, so I'll … Read more

I was working on this when I read this CNET News.com post. Apparently, Bill Gates believes that a strong technology sector will help keep America's economy healthy. I couldn't agree more. But I have a somewhat different take on the role tech has played in the U.S. economy.

Over the past few decades, the U.S. technology industry has had a number of "the sky is falling" moments, and every time we've managed to work through it and come out stronger than before.

For example, when I entered the job market in 1980, … Read more

Established defense contractor iRobot has prevailed in courtroom battles against Robotic FX, effectively gaining an unconditional surrender from the upstart military-industrial wannabe.

Late on Friday, Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot said that two federal courts had ruled in its favor. The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts determined that Robotic FX and founder Jameel Ahed--a former iRobot employee--had misused trade secrets belonging to iRobot, while the U.S. District Court in Northern Alabama determined that Robotic FX had deliberately infringed on patents.

As if that weren't enough, a related settlement requires the disbanding of Robotic FX, with certain assets to … Read more