It's Vista vs Linux..

Bill Gates "signed" the first 20,000 copies of Windows
Vista consumer editions,yet they sold for about the regular
price of the software at Amazon.com

Linux for consumers got a boost like it never got before when a consortium of companies agreed to back the open source product; IBM, HP, Intel, Oracle, Novell and others said in effect: Don't buy Microsoft Windows Vista, download Linux for the desktop, a place rarely achieved by the otherwise popular operating system. Indonesia economist Faisal Basri said that if Indonesia weren't spending $2.5 billion a year on Microsoft software, it could spend all that money on poor people, hungry people, people in need; open source development would save exactly $2.5 billion, he reasoned.

Geeks and Slashdotters piled on Microsoft for being unethical when it hired an independent reporter to try to fix up an arcane article on Oops in Wikipedia; more to the point, no one has come up with an acceptable way to address the undoubted errors in the article, since story subjects are forbidden to edit (a rule put in when Wikipedia's founder succeeded in editing his biography); cf: the almost totally fact-free entry under "Bangkok Post".

The eager Malaysian government egged on a libel suit by the New Straits Times against the country's only two well known bloggers. Singapore licenced an Internet Protocol TV operator, putting government in the Internet broadcast movement for the first time. US senators Ron Wyden, John McCain and John Sununu, who represent the two major parties, introduced a bill to make the Internet tax moratorium a permanent law; chances of the law actually being passed range from slim to fat.

MySpace sued spam king Scott "make-p3nis-fast" Richter for hijacking accounts and sending millions of spam to their friends on the social site. MySpace executives said they want to double the number of nations in which it operates to 20, none of which begin with "T".

It will take China two years at the most to overcome the United States, Wang Enhai of the state-run Chinese Internet Network Information Centre told the official China Daily - in the number of Internet users; he figures Chinese Net use is increasing so fast that by New Year's Day, 2009, China will have close to 250 million people connected, almost one in five, while the United States will have just under four in five. Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao was shocked to discover his ungrateful citizens are "often more interested in salacious pictures, bloodthirsty games and political scandal than Marxist lessons;" as a result, China (which never censors the Internet) will launch a campaign to purify it.

The Sun shone over Intel again, and we don't mean the recent upbeat forecasts from both; the firms decided to let bygones be bygones and end their testy standoff; Intel chips will go in Sun Microsystems computers, starting almost immediately.

Sun Microsystems looked at its books and saw a bright, joyous colour for the first time in five quarters - black; profits in Q4 2006 were $126 million, a welcome change from last year's loss of $223 in the same quarter.

The pr0n industry looked in the mirror and confronted its ultimate fear: high-definition TV, which will make the tiniest zits and smallest tufts of cellulite make them look like, well, ordinary people.

Yuppiephone makers shipped more than one billion handsets in 2006, for the first time since the end of the Sukhothai era. Profits at Nokia of Finland grew 19 per cent, both in 2006 (to $5.56 billion) and in the year's last quarter (to $1.55 billion) despite intense price pressure. Profits at Microsoft of Redmond dropped $1.13 billion on deferred revenues despite no price pressure whatsoever.

China broke a long silence by admitting it shot down one of its own satellites; the Chinese were gobsmacked by mean-spirited suggestions they meant any threat to other space-bound countries.

US federal investigators near broke a gut guffawing at the Apple "internal probe" by ex-vice president Al Gore that cleared Steve "President for Life" Jobs over stock options fraud allegations; the feds from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission grilled Mr Jobs at length and warned him, "We'll be back."

Earnings at world No 2 yuppiephone maker Motorola of America fell 48 per cent in the fourth quarter to $624 million; company auditors and industry watchers agreed Motorola mispriced its Razr cash cows, selling them "six for a nickel" (1.8 baht) in some promotions; as a result, CEO Ed Zander will keep his job and 3,500 employees will be fired (5 percent of the work force) to make up the losses.

The Universally Lusted Quote of the Week and accompanying Solid Metal Hoistable Post Database QOW Trophy was won by Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro; accused by "movie and music industry" suits of a propaganda campaign to make them look bad, Mr Shapiro shot back: "I don't make you look evil - your lawsuits against old people around the country make you look evil."

Harlequin's Romance Report 2007 (really!) found that 55 per cent of men and 47 per cent of women who own a PDA or cell phone have sent a sexually explicit email, text or instant message.