Joe's links

Mercury Interactive (acquired by Hewlett-Packard last year for $4.5 billion in cash) settled its stock-option backdating class-action. The settlement of $117.5 dwarfs the next largest backdating class-action settlement reached by Rambus Inc.

Earlier this year, Mercury paid agreed with the SEC to a fine of $28 million. The SEC has suits pending against former Mercury executives for securities fraud. More at SiliconValley.com.

Notebooks outsold desktops 64 to 36 in a bundle of 100 in the final quarter of 2006. Read more at TG Daily.

U.S. Corporate litigation was down 2005-06 according to Litigation Trends Survey conducted by international law firm Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. Details here.

Rambus Inc. is and will be pimping its wares. Intel Developer Forum, Rambus Developer Forum, Denali MemCom and another Rambus Developer Forum. Details here.

Inside Intel an interview of Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group. "We do the core. That’s what we do. But the other things we put around it—that’s up for negotiation." Read more at EDN.

Overclocked liquid cooled freaks from the Rambus Developer Forum at the Inquirer. The geek who put together my computer and spent five minutes expounding on the included thermal analysis tool will love the one . . .

Read about America's Grassroots Motorsport - yes, racing lawmowers.

IBM, AMD, Nvidia, Intel on the future of gaming processors here.