LinuxWorld reports: “Virginia Beach, Va., was forced to pay Microsoft $129,000 for software licenses, even though the city had
probably already paid for the software and did not receive due process. Some companies have suffered the
same fate; others likely will. Joe Barr explains the wherefores of Redmond’s scare tactics and suggests that open
software is the best defense.”

The dangers of sending email from work were brought vividly
home to a lawyer at a City firm this week who sent out a mail
telling friends about his girlfriend’s sexual tastes. Bradley Chait is
now facing disciplinary action after the mail achieved cult status,
days after it was sent, reports ZDCOUK.

Nando Times reports that congressional investigators and federal regulators are cooperating
to close Web sites selling fake identification cards to help curb the recent explosion of identity theft cases.

“To our dismay and alarm, the convention continues to be a
document that threatens the rights of the individual while extending
the powers of police authorities, creates a low-barrier protection
of rights uniformly across borders and ignores highly regarded data
protection principles,” coalition members wrote in a letter sent
Tuesday, as reported by ZDCOUK.

NewsForge reader John Gowin submitted this interesting story: “Recently, Global Technologies Ltd. Inc created something of a stir in the GNU/Linux community with a press release announcing their successful porting of the GNOME desktop environment to the Windows platform. After reading the discussions on various web sites, like Slashdot and others, Linux Orbit decided to contact Global Technologies and ask them a little more about the project. We were fortunate enough to get in contact with Charles Northrup, the CTO for Global Technologies and the lead developer on the GNOME port. The following 10 question interview was granted via email and Mr Northrup sheds a little more light on the reasons for the port as well as why GNOME was ported instead of KDE. The answers were very enlightening.”

From ZDCOUK: “The premise of the movie: Gates was killed in MacArthur Park
while making an appearance as part of a charity event. He was
shot from the roof of the Park Plaza hotel. The alleged gunman, a
radical fanning the flames of class warfare, fled and was killed by
the cops.” The Register notes that the film’s promotional site, billgatesisdead.com runs on, you guessed it, Linux.

Linux Weekly News updates us on the latest kernel happenings.

A Reuters report at Infoworld reports: “Sun says it has overtaken Hewlett-Packard and Compaq in the global market for servers.”

Linux Weekly News has posted the latest security updates to bitchx.

Sony is giving away a wireless modem with its Vaio notebooks, one of the many deals being offered by PC makers in
this exceptionally dire holiday selling season. From CNET.