It was the worst-kept secret in the internet industry, but today Microsoft proved all the rumor-mongers right by confirming that it is taking a stake in Facebook, and shutting Google out of the social networking website.

A law requiring publishers of sexually explicit content to document and record the age of participants in material has been ruled unconstitutional by a US court. Experts had warned that the law could cause problems for photo-sharing websites.

If there was any doubt that Google has the power to pull the plug on Firefox, it's been laid to rest.

CTIAThe senior director of entertainment products at Motorola questions whether Apple will truly "open up" the iPhone.

UpdatedThis story was updated on Thursday 25th October 2007 23:21 to add comment from Microsoft.

ExclusiveThe Official UK Charts Company (OCC), the organisation that maintains the UK's music sales tables, will include albums sold on USB Flash disks in its tallies from next Monday, 29 October, Register Hardware has learned.

World-straddling arms'n'airliners behemoth Boeing yesterday announced successful testing of a hydrogen-fuelled aircraft engine which will power the company's future High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) robo-plane.

Singletons forced to sit through excruciating blind dates can now report their experiences straight from their mobile phone, ensuring that no one else suffers.

MPs are urging Revenue and Customs to update its multiple helplines and complex paper registration systems for new business taxpayers.

Intel has agreed to stump up $250m to Transmeta to settle the patent dispute case between the firms without battling through the courts. Intel will pay its rival $150m in a lump sum, plus an annual license fee of $20m for the next five years.

Whitehall has acted on the recommendations of a parliamentary committee by improving services and value for money, according to its chair.

The SCO Group, which earlier this month filed for bankrupcy protection, says it has received an offer for its Unix business.

Tactile feedback firm Immersion could be on shaky ground with its latest development, the world’s first portable navigation devices (PNDs) with vibrating touchscreens.

Carphone Warehouse (CPW) has started offering monthly contracts on Talkmobile, a new branded virtual operator.

An Oz barmaid who splendidly "entertained customers" in a Western Australia hotel by "crushing beer cans between her bare breasts" has been fined A$1,000 dollars (£439) for a breach of the Liquor Control Act.

Cute or what? It's Creative's latest accessory for arch-rival Apple's diminutive iPod Shuffle: a travel speaker that clips on to the bottom of the player turning it into a handheld sound blaster.

Internet oversight agency ICANN has launched an investigation into the possibility that insider information is being used to snap up desirable domain names before the person or organisation likely to be interested in them has had a chance to buy.

The former TV parenting guru leading a government review into violent video games and internet predators says parents need to get their kids out of the house if they want to keep them safe from net creeps.

T-Mobile last night unveiled the Sidekick Slide, the first handset in the consumer-friendly email gadget range to appear since T-Mobile cut its ties with Sharp and signed up Motorola as a manufacturer.

The US now has until 14 December to come up with a trade compensation scheme for the blow its curbs on internet gambling have dealt EU firms.

ExclusiveThe record industry is pressing the UK's ISPs for a deal that would see persistent illegal file sharers automatically booted off the net.

Virtualisation software giant VMware has pumped out impressive third quarter results with profit up 90 per cent buoyed by strong sales of its hypervisor package.

Michael Bay, the director of Transformers, has slammed distributor Paramount's decision to release the hi-def version of the film only on HD DVD.

Site newsIt may have escaped your notice that El Reg's US editor Ashlee "Blade" Vance will on 6 November be hosting what our Strategy Boutique has dubbed an "e-Symposium" on virtualization, in association with VMware and Intel.

Channel WeeklyThe atmosphere at the Christmas party for Microsoft's lawyers might be a little quieter this year after the software vendor finally called time on its attempts to get the EU to agree to the Gates/Ballmer vision of competition.

The Airbus A380 today entered commercial service with an inaugural seven hour flight from Singapore to Sydney, in the process wowing passengers who'd snapped up seats in Singapore Airlines' charity eBay ticket auction.

Many years ago, a comet strike or a wandering asteroid passing through Saturn's moon system, crashed into one of the orbiting bodies, shattering it and sending fragments the size of sports stadia whirling along its orbital path.

British warboffinry spinoff firm QinetiQ announced today that it had acquired Boldon James, secure-messaging software providers to UK military and spook customers.

The UK's implementation of an electronic borders system by 2009 will mean the end of the UK-Republic of Ireland Common Travel Area, which allows passport-free travel between the two countries. The move will not however lead to the introduction of border controls on the Republic's land border with Northern Ireland, but will lead to passport checks, or something very like them, for travellers between Northern Ireland and the UK mainland.

ReviewThe Pro is the current feature-packed flagship of Abit's P35 range of motherboards based around - surprise, surprise - Intel's P35 chipset, and supports Intel's range of 1333, 1066 and 800MHz frontside processors, including the Core 2 Extreme, the Core 2 Quad and the Core 2 Duo.

New features of botnets created by the infamous Storm Worm allow denial of service attacks to be launched against security defenders that attempt to interrupt its operation.

An Aussie PhD student has developed an algorithm that he says can turbo charge an ordinary copper phone line to deliver downloads at 200Mbit/s.

Manufacturer Satmap Systems has unveiled a handheld GPS device for outdoors types that promises to pin-point your location using SD card-based mapping.

Apple's figures came out on Tuesday, revealing that all is going well in Cupertino, but analysts crawling over the details are trying to work out if they reveal anything else besides - such as the revenue cut Apple is getting from every iPhone in use.

The days of drive-in movies are long gone and the radio sometimes just doesn’t cut it for entertainment. So Panasonic’s unveiled what’s believed to be the world’s first in-car Blu-ray Disc drive at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show.

Web browser pioneer Opera has seen its innovations ripped off so many times it can be excused for borrowing some ideas itself.

Yahoo! folk have thrown a large web 2.0 ball at their search engine by giving it a makeover in an effort to grab market share from rival internet firm Google.

The European Commission has waved through four new genetically modified organisms (GMO) for consumption in the European Union. This means that 15 GMOs have been allowed in to the EU since the region lifted its outright ban on the crops in 2004.

The conventional wisdom that banking organisations are more diligent with security was skewered in a presentation at the RSA conference this week.

Documents exposed by The Times show that the UK's Labour government worked tirelessly to try and prevent the EU capping mobile phone roaming rates, a move which cost the industry millions.

Trend Micro has acquired data leak prevention firm Provilla, in an agreement that expands its business beyond its core antivirus and content security markets. Financial terms are undisclosed.

A very traditional niche of scripting languages, (such as Perl, Python or Ruby), has been in the ad hoc manipulation of databases – from grabbing data, transforming it, performing bulk updates, right on through to full-on data migration projects that move data from one platform or RDBMS to another. Scripting languages are perfect for these types of task because they are quick to write and test, can be used interactively while the problem space is being explored, and because extraneous features – such as graphical user interface, detailed user documentation and so on – are not required.

MySQL and Google have quietly tied up a coding deal seen as an integral part of the open source database firm's software roadmap for the next few years.

CommentSilicon Valley's onanistic elements have been in vinegar-stroke mode for an age over the tussle between Google and Microsoft to invest in $15bn profit-lite social networking phenomenon Facebook.

BEA blinked this morning and said it would enter takeover negotiations with Oracle, and anyone else that’s interested, at a floor of $21 per share.

The phenomenal success of Nintendo's Wii games console has helped the Japanese manufacturer to double its profits during the six months to the end of September. Nintendo said on Thursday that net profit reached 132.42bn yen ($1.2bn) for the first half of its latest fiscal year, up from 54.4bn yen for the same time last year. Group sales more than doubled to 694.8bn yen ($6.1bn) from 298.82bn yen last time around.

Gary Edwards of the Open Document Foundation has a fascinating post on the important of Microsoft Office compatibility to the success of the ISO-approved Open Document formats.

EMC saw its stock price leap more than eight per cent today, thanks in part to its 86 per cent stake in the hotter-than-hot virtualization outfit, VMware.

UpdatedThis story was updated on Friday 26th October 2007 16:59 GMT to add comment from eBay public relations.

InteropHe's faced with the unenviable task of convincing the world that Microsoft wants to play nicely with competitors - and also convincing the troops and top management that it's worth it.

More than 430 organizations spanning all fifty US states have fired off a letter urging Senate leaders to oppose a bill that would overhaul the country's patent system. And that includes tech outfits like Qualcomm and AmberWave.