Reiser's Sentencing Delayed
There's been a delay in sentencing Linux programmer Hans Reiser for the murder of his wife. It was supposed to happen Wednesday but apparently plea negotiations over reducing his sentence to second-decree murder - put into play when he led the cops to the body - haven't finished. If Reiser holds up his end - he's supposed to confess how he killed her and agree not to appeal - it'll mean 15 years to life rather than 25. The new hearing date is August 29.

Microsoft Licensing in Flux
Microsoft is expected to change its licensing policies on August 19 and drop a restriction that requires that software running on virtual machines stay on physical servers for three months.

Rumors of Two AMDs Return
Speculation is making the rounds again that AMD's long-promised asset lite strategy will see the company split in two: a chip development operation under AMD's new CEO Dirk Meyer and a manufacturing entity.

US Web Hosting Good for $10.6b: Gartner
Gartner reckons the US market for web hosting, expected to be good for $10.6 billion this year, will grow at annual compound rate of 19% through 2012.

Shrike Watch
AMD's Shrike processor, its first go at a combination CPU + GPU, its reason for going deep into debt to buy ATI, is now supposed to pair a dual-core Phenom with a DirectX 10.1-compliant ATI RV8000 GPU core, according to tgdaily.com, which figures TSMC in Taiwan will make the thing.

The Cost of Not Getting Bought by Microsoft
Yahoo has redone its sums and now says it cost $36 million, not $22 million, to keep Microsoft at bay. The other price was letting Carl Icahn and his henchman on the board. The other two seats Icahn wrested were filled Thursday by former Viacom CEO Frank Biondi and former Nextel CEO John Chapple. Yahoo's stock continues to toy with slumping into the teens where Microsoft found it.

iPhone Apps May Be a Billion-Dollar Business: Jobs
Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal that the iPhone App Store averaged a million dollars a day in sales its first month out.

He said he'd "never seen anything like this in my career for software."

He's toying with the idea that it could be a billion-dollar marketplace. Apple's 30% cut, however, reportedly only covers its costs and the Top 10 apps are fetching half the sales.

Jobs also confirmed that Apple has a so-called "kill switch" that can remotely remove malicious software from an iPhone.

Apple has also removed three applications from the store such as the utterly useless $999.99 I Am Rich program that just displayed a red gem.

Meanwhile, Best Buy, which already sells Macs, is gonna start selling still-supply-constrained iPhones in September.

The only flies in the ointment are the rising reports of dropped calls and reception glitches.

Rackable Puts its Storage Unit on the Block
Fresh from another quarterly loss, Rackable Systems says it intends to divest its RapidScale storage line, throwing in patents, hardware assets, development team and on-going business relationships. It's retained Strategic Advisory Service International LLC as an advisor.

Microsoft Service Packs RTM
Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to manufacturing. They're supposed to include a "substantial" number of updates based on customer feedback since VS 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 wandered out nine months ago.

Scarecrow Strategy
The Open Invention Network (OIN), the IBM-inspired operation that buys up patents to protect Linux, told ComputerWorld it's going to set up a site where investors can stake their claims, so to speak, to ward off patent jumpers.

Apple on Fire - But Not in a Good Way
A three-alarm fire Tuesday night damaged one of the six buildings, described as an R&D building, on Apple's Cupertino campus. No injuries were reported.

Backdating Watch
Apple's former general counsel Nancy Heinen has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle up with the SEC over backdating options that went to Steve Jobs and herself among others. She won't be allowed to serve as an officer at a public company for five years or practice law before the SEC for three. She admits no wrongdoing. The SEC's civil suit charged her with having fake board minutes created. Apple's ex-CFO Fred Anderson paid $3.5 million last year and blamed Jobs.