Apple's international Black Friday sale goes live, $100 off MacBook Air/Pros, savings on iPads and iPods  —  Update: Black Friday sales are now available at United Kingdom, Finland, France, Poland, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands' Apple Stores.  —  Apple's Black Friday deals …

Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear a School-Issued RFID Tracker  —  A Texas high school student is being suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip.  —  Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing …

“Your criticisms are completely wrong”: Stallman on software patents, 20 years in  —  Richard Stallman, father of the free software movement.  —  Richard Stallman / stallman.org  —  The large, bearded man bounded to the front of the room last Friday, hand thrust into the air, fingers shaking.

Google to Miami court: Apple is withholding iPhone 5, iPad mini source code  —  Samsung hast just added the iPhone 5 and iPad mini to its list of accused products (court approval is a mere formality), and wholly-owned Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility wants to do the same in its litigation …

iPad mini Review  —  Over the last two months, Apple has updated almost all of its core product lines, with the addition of a 13" model to the Retina MacBook Pro line and new silicon for the iPad and Mac mini to go with ground up redesigns for the iPhone, iMac, iPod touch, and iPod nano.

Windows 8 store adds 7,000 apps in two weeks to pass 20,000 mark, almost 18,000 are free  —  The Windows Store in Windows 8 has passed 20,000 apps.  It's not clear exactly when it happened, but Win App Update, which keeps track of the totals, posted on Thursday that the milestone was likely reached on Tuesday.

Venture-Backed Commerce Sites Banking on TV Ads to Lure Big Audiences  —  Search engine optimization, Google AdWords and email lists are all essential components of online campaigns, but several e-commerce companies are giving mass media a whirl.  —  Slightly ahead of the holidays …

Is the Saudi Government Monitoring Women?  —  An uproar broke out on Twitter last week when some Saudi women discovered that their male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them that the women under their custody have left or entered the country.

Media bigs flock to YouTube power players  —  Why MCNs like Fullscreen, Maker are luring investors  —  Above: Fullscreen CEO George Strompolos, right, holds a meeting with staffers in Culver City, CA.  —  There may be no better sign that there's a hot Internet sector brewing than Peter Chernin choosing to invest there — repeatedly.

The Shrewd Shopper Carries a Smartphone  —  This Black Friday, to the tech-aware go the spoils.  —  Retailers are trying to lure shoppers away from the Internet, where they have increasingly been shopping to avoid Black Friday madness, and back to the stores.