Last month we brought you the astonishing news that someone actually wanted to by SCO, the now-bankrupt perennial thorn-in-the-side of the Linux community. As of today, the joke is — again — on them, as they've had to hightail it in reverse with their tail between their legs.

Early-bird specials are a good thing, and Mozilla is offering one up just in time for Thanksgiving: The first beta release of Firefox 3 a.k.a. Grand Paradiso.

Apple has been riding a wave of good publicity recently, stretching from the release of the much-anticipated iPhone through to last month's debut of Leopard, the latest installment of Mac OS X. But the happy times may be headed for a dip after questions arose about whether Apple is using it's technology to spy on users.

We all know that eBay picked up Skype in 2005 for about $2.6 billion, and just about everybody thinks it was a mistake. Now the rumor mill is alive and running with — what else? — rumors that Google wants to take it off eBay's hands.

A deal between Microsoft and Kyocera Mita, a Japanese printer manufacturer, has resulted in new questions about Microsoft's always-shaky claims of patent infringement.

Firefox 3 has had it's share of troubles lately, and the most recent set — which included an article in Thursday's New York Times — took a turn for the R-rated yesterday as Mozilla's Director of Community Development described the claims in the Times article as "horseshit."

A new report on Windows Vista implementation has just been released, and analysts are interpreting it as giving a wide window for Linux in small businesses.

Reports are starting to surface that Dell, which already offers Ubuntu pre-installed on it's desktop machines, will soon be certifying Ubuntu's server package for pre-installation on Dell servers.

Sun Microsystems made the move into the virtualisation market Wednesday, with the announcement of Sun xVM, their new open source virtualisation platform.

The OpenDocument Foundation went out of business this week, with nothing more than a twitter to announce it's departure.

Former arch-rivals Dell and Sun Microsystems have come together on a deal to provide Sun's Solaris operating system on Dell machines, as well as direct customer support for the systems from Dell.

Today was a busy day in the mergers and acquisitions market, with the news of an overwhelming vote of support for the merger of XM and Sirius balancing out the European Commission's announcement of an investigation of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.

Google's much-talked-about acquisition of DoubleClick will get extra scrutiny by the European Union, according to a decision released today by the European Commission.

The low-cost Linux boxes that went on sale at WalMart stores in the U.S. last week are gone, according to the company's website. The good news is, they're not discontinued, they're sold out.

The much-anticipated One Laptop Per Child is finally available to order – but if you want one, you'd better get moving because they're only up for sale until November 26th!

Northeastern University has picked a patent-infringement fight, and they picked it with the big boys on the playground: Google.

Google released the development kit for it's much-discussed mobile-OS Andriod today with a contest worth $10 million.

Last week, we reported that Microsoft — which we affectionately like to think of as "The Empire" — had struck a blow against Linux in developing countries by destroying a Nigerian deal to provide Mandriva Linux to school-children.

The push from cities around the country to provide city-funded wireless internet access is starting to stagnate, with plan changes in two more cities.

According to the Associated Press, Sony CEO Howard Stringer wishes he could turn back time. The comments came at a Manhattan "Captains of Industry" lecture sponsored by the 92nd Street YMCA, and related to Sony's Blu Ray DVD format.