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Starting on May 22nd, Microsoft will begin offering free Xbox 360 consoles to students who purchase a new Windows 7 PC with a price tag over $700.

Says the company:

You can buy any kind of PC, although we recommend a few specifically for students like the HP Pavillion DM4 a great entertainment system on the go, the Dell Inspiron 14r a stylish powerful 14” PC, and the Samsung Series 9 a computer that has been described as looking like it is about to rocket off the runway. Ask Ben the PC guy, he has one! If you are still trying to figure out what might be the best option for you, you can use the PC Scout, an interactive app available on windows.com that helps you find a perfect match.

If you have a .edu email address you can purchase your new PC through one of our participating retailers including Dell.com, HP.com or Microsoft Store. If you don't have a .edu address or prefer to walk into a store, touch the PCs and test their features, bring your Student ID into Best Buy or any Microsoft Store retail location Check with your chosen retailer for additional specifics they may have in place.

Thanks to the Hargreaves report, which reviews UK copyright law, it appears that a few of the more archaic points of the laws will be revised for the digital age.

One such law makes it illegal for UK residents to rip DVDs, CDs and Blu-rays to your PC, even if you are simply trying to rip some MP3s from a CD to place it on your media player.

While there has been very little enforcement of the law in history, software for ripping discs is illegal in the UK. Hargreaves says this puts UK at an unfair economic position against other countries, including the US.

Says the report:

My recommendations set out how the intellectual property framework can promote innovation and economic growth in the UK economy.

They are designed to enhance the economic potential of the UK's creative industries and to ensure that the emergence of high technology businesses, especially smaller businesses, in other sectors are not impeded by our IP laws.

Additionally, the report wants the rules relaxed on parodies and reworkings of original content, which should help users who want to upload covers and other videos to YouTube.

LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, has seen its stock jump as high as 170 percent in its first day of trading, seeing a peak of $122.70 per share.

The company's IPO price was $45 per share and the stock opened at over $80 per share at 9:30 this morning.

As of writing, the stock is trading at $102, good for 125 percent gain.

The company raised $353 million in the deal, selling 8 percent of its shares. The company was valued at $4.3 billion, which was clearly a huge undersell by the underwriting banks.

If anything is clear from today's action is that a social networking bubble has just begun, with Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and other companies expected to IPO in the next couple of years.

LinkedIn currently has 102 million users, slowing revenue growth from ads and subscriptions, and has never turned a profit.

Following in the footsteps of other ISPs like Comcast, AT&T began its broadband bandwidth caps earlier this month, giving subscribers "generous" caps of 150-250GB, depending on your subscription package.

The company claimed that only 2 percent of all users ever go over 250GB, so the cap will hardly affect anyone.

New data from Netflix (via DSL) makes it abundantly clear that those caps may be "generous" now but they will not be in the very near future.

Netflix now accounts for 30% of peak bandwidth usage in the U.S., with the average user streaming 40GB of movies and TV shows per month.

That number explodes to 80GB per month for users that stream through their Xbox 360 console. Overall, one quarter of all Netflix traffic comes through the 360, second only to the PlayStation 3, which accounts for almost 31 percent.

How long until these console users, who likely also game online occasionally, download DLC and possibly download movies from iTunes HD reach their caps?

According to Microsoft, one in every fourteen downloads is malware, and that Internet Explorer 8 and 9 blocks up to 5 million attacks, daily.

The figures come alongside a post boasting of the Application Reputation mechanism in Internet Explorer 9.

AR uses URL-based tactics to see if the site uses malware, and also check links and files.

Says Jeb Haber, the program manager lead for SmartScreen says:

Using reputation helps protect users from newly released malware programs - pretending to be legitimate software programs - that are not yet detected by existing defense mechanisms.

Reputation also enables IE9 to remove unnecessary warnings for downloads with an established positive reputation. Both publishers and individual applications build reputation. For example, a digitally signed application from a well-known publisher that has been widely downloaded has a better reputation than an unsigned application that has not yet been downloaded widely and has just been posted on a newly created Web site.

Furthermore, the manager adds:

Google has announced today that it is currently fixing an Android security flaw that was brought to the public's attention last week by German researchers.

The group explained on Friday that some Google account authentication tokens were apparently being sent OTA unencrypted, leaving users with their data freely available if they were on public Wi-Fi.

Hackers using simple software could steal account info for Google Calendar, Contacts and Picasa accounts.

Users with Android 2.3.4 are free of the issue, but 98.4 percent of Android devices run Android 2.3.3 or lower, making the fix useless for the vast majority.

Google has begun rolling out the server-side patch this week for Android 1.5 - 2.3.3, and it will be completed by the end of the week.

Says Google, via CW:

Today we're starting to roll out a fix which addresses a potential security flaw that could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data available in calendar and contacts. This fix requires no action from users and will roll out globally over the next few days.

Apple has now proposed a smaller standardized SIM card than is currently used, allowing its iOS devices to be marginally thinner.

UK carrier Orange seems to support the proposal:

We were quite happy to see last week that Apple has submitted a new requirement to (European telecoms standards body) ETSI for a smaller SIM form factor -- smaller than the one that goes in iPhone 4 and iPad.

They have done that through the standardization route, through ETSI, with the sponsorship of some major mobile operators, Orange being one of them.

Processing would take some time, but thew first devices using those SIM cards could be out next year.

Intel has confirmed today that it will introduce over 10 new tablet running its own chips, trying to steal some market share from mobile architecture giant ARM Holdings.

The company will show off the designs at the Computex computer trade show which starts on May 31st.

Asus and other companies are expected to unveil tablets at the event, as well.

Overall, 35 Intel chip-based tablets are expected to ship throughout the year.

Intel is launching their "Oak Trail" chips soon, boasting low power consumption.

Sony just cannot catch a break.

Within three days of the company restoring the PSN after over 3 weeks of downtime, Sony has had to take down its PSN web logins, thanks to a password exploit.

Users trying to sign in via Playstation.com, the PlayStation forums, PlayStation Blog, Qriocity.com or the Music Unlimited are greeted with the following message:

The server is currently down for maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later.

Additionally (via PCM):

Unfortunately this also means that those who are still trying to change their password ... via Playstation.com or Qriocity.com will be unable to do so for the time being. This is due to essential maintenance and at present it is unclear how long this will take. In the meantime you will still be able to sign into PSN via your PlayStation 3 and PSP devices to connect to game services and view Trophy/Friends information.

Verizon will bring the Xperia Play smartphone to the U.S. next week, May 26th.

Sony's "PlayStation Phone" is an Android device that has slide-out gaming controls.

The device has been available in Europe for two months now but the American launch kept getting delayed.

Sony's smartphone will come pre-loaded with Madden NFL 11, Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, The Sims 3, Star Battalion, Crash Bandicoot, and Tetris.

The smartphone will cost $200 with 2-year contract.

Developer Team Bondi has confirmed that at one point, the blockbuster title LA Noire filled six DVDs for the Xbox 360.

Says the Team:

We've always been called stupidly ambitious ... we make very big games.

It's the biggest map that we've done and that Rockstar have done, so there's a lot of detail in there, and also a lot of actor's performances - 21 hours worth.

As new buyers will see, the team was able to use enhanced compression tech, bringing the game to a robust three DVDs.

It was a struggle, however: "It took a lot of effort to get down to three discs."

On the other hand, Sony's version fits easily on one 50GB Blu-ray disc, with zero compression issues.

BGR made headlines yesterday claiming that a "solid Apple source" had told them that the company is planning a major product launch this week, in celebration of their 10th retail anniversary.

The site explains:

-There’s an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.

-During the overnight shift, it’s going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.

-There are a wide variety of roles, we’re told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.

-Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.

Although only partially confirmed, we reported earlier this week that Amazon is working on a full family of Android devices for the holidays, including a smartphone, a 6-inch tablet and a 10-inch tablet.

There are little other details but today BGR is saying that the larger tablet will be the first to run on Nvidia's "Kal-El" quad-core processor.

Additionally, the smaller entry level tablet will run on the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, with a higher clock speed than seen in most current tablets.

In terms of pricing, speculation is the 6-inch tablet will match Barnes & Noble's $250 Nook Color, while the larger tablet will sell for $400, which would really put a squeeze on Apple, Samsung and others.

An Israeli couple has named their newborn "Like," thanks to their joint obsession with social networking giant Facebook.

Says the father (via German press):

To me it is important to give my children names that are not used anywhere else, at least not in Israel. If once people gave Biblical names and that was the icon, then today [the Facebook Like] is one of the most famous icons in the world.

Like Adler is the third child from Lior and Vardit Adler. Their other two kids are Dvash ("Honey" in Hebrew) and Pie.

The mother adds: "Like has a nice, international ring to it."

Sony has listed the titles it will give away for free to gamers affected by the nearly one-month long outage of the PSN.

PS3 owners in the U.S. get to choose 2 of the following 5 games:

Dead Nation
inFAMOUS
LittleBigPlanet
Super Stardust HD
Wipeout HD+ Fury

If you are a PSP owner, the choices are:

LittleBigPlanet (PSP)
ModNation Racers
Pursuit Force
Killzone Liberation

The downloads will be available for 30 days after the PlayStation Store is restored, but Sony has not given a set date for that yet except that it will be before the end of the month.

Additionally, Sony is giving away "Ooblag’s Alien Casino" PSN game to all affected users, as well.