Retail employees who sell violent video games to minors would face a $500 fine under a bill passed by the Washington state Senate.
The measure, approved 47-7, targets games that depict violence against women and the killing of police officers. It was passed by the state House last month and is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Gary Locke.
One of the games likely to be hit by the measure is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which has become one of the hottest-selling titles for Sony (SNE) PlayStation 2 console.
A spokesperson for Interactive Digital Software Association denounced the measure as a misguided attempt at video-game censorship.
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Sony recalls more Vaios: Consumer electronics giant Sony said it would recall 20,000 Vaio desktop personal computers sold in Japan between September 2002 and January 2003 to replace defective power-supply parts.
This is in addition to 20,000 Vaio PCs recalled in the United States and Canada last December due to a similar problem, a Sony spokesman said.
A glitch in power-supply parts used in three types of upscale Vaio desktop computers -- the PCV-RZ50, RZ60 and RZ70P -- was found to damage the power units and prevent the computers from being switched on.
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Banning bland spam: U.S. regulators asked a federal judge to shut down an Internet spammer who it says uses "deceptively bland" subject lines to steer people to adult websites.
Lawyers with the Federal Trade Commission asked for a restraining order on Brian Westby, an alleged purveyor of unwanted junk e-mail, or spam.
The agency said Westby used unassuming subject lines such as "Did you hear the news?" to drive Internet users to a sexually explicit website called Married But Lonely.
In some cases, consumers may have opened the e-mails in their offices, in violation of company policies, or children may have been exposed to inappropriate adult-oriented material, a spokesperson for the FTC said.
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No tech-flaw talk: Fifteen minutes before he was to lecture on security flaws in a debit-card system used on 223 college campuses, 22-year-old Billy Hoffman found out a judge had banned him from talking.
Hoffman had used a screwdriver to break into a laundry room swipe machine that reads BuzzCards -- identification cards used by staff and his fellow students at Georgia Tech and similar to those used at hundreds of other schools. The computer engineering major says he found ways to bilk the school out of Cokes, laundry service and cash.
He was scheduled to discuss his findings before computer hackers at the Interz0ne conference, but card maker Blackboard got a judge to issue a temporary restraining order. Hoffman said he was trying to expose security flaws so they could be fixed.
Hoffman's lawyer said the courts must decide whether intellectual property laws prohibit exposing security flaws.
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Court halts chips: Microtune said a U.S. court issued a preliminary injunction barring Broadcom from selling a semiconductor that is at the heart of a patent-infringement lawsuit.
A Texas district court ruled that Broadcom (BRCM) is barred from selling, offering to sell or importing Broadcom's silicon tuner and certain reference design boards containing the technology.
The injunction comes after a jury recently found that Broadcom infringed on a Microtune (TUNE) patent related to a single-chip tuner used in TVs, set-top boxes, cable modems and digital TVs, Microtune said.
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Qwest trial delayed: Prosecutors asked a federal judge to delay a civil case against eight current or former Qwest Communications (Q) executives until a parallel criminal case against four of them is concluded.
An assistant U.S. attorney said that letting the civil case go forward could jeopardize the criminal case. The filing was the first indication the government was also investigating the Genuity deal for possible illegal activity.
Compiled by Kari L. Dean. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
