6 February – Five Stories You Need to Read

Yahoo!News reports that just “[d]ays after a beaming Bill Gates unveiled his much-vaunted Windows Vista software at a retail price of $400 for the premium version, Latin American street vendors are hawking pirate copies for under $10.”

In a different story, Yahoo!News reveals that “[r]esponding to a report that its right to sell Linux is under scrutiny by a group that controls key parts of the open source operating system, a spokesman for Novell on Monday said the company does not expect to make any changes to its product line as a result of the tiff.”

According to Networkworld, “[a] controversial proposal to create a special domain for pornographic content on the Internet – dubbed the .xxx domain – appears to be gaining momentum after years of on-again, off-again negotiations with the Internet’s technical coordinating body.”

eWeek.com reports that “[a] Canadian company, Syscan, has been awarded a patent by its country’s Patent Office that may help lower the cost of RFID tags, Syscan’s officials said.”

Also on eWeek.com, Chris Capossela, who manages the Microsoft Office System family of products, talks about the products, the experience and the future.