From News.com: Microsoft claimed the No. 1 spot among at-home Internet users in August for the first time since March, according to a report to be released Monday.

News.com details a new collaboration between Compaq and Microsoft to develop wireless devices for corporate networks. The two companies are hedging bets that the real money in wireless access will come from corporations eager for employees to connect cable-free to the corporate LAN.

ZDNet’s Stan Gibson comments on the latest fad for dotcom businesses: turning a profit. “The bottom line is if you want to thrive in e-business today, you’ve got to know how to produce a thriving bottom line.”

From an Associated Press report: “The government is raising salaries by as much as 33 percent for thousands of technology workers in an effort to better compete with private companies for employees. The raises, which take effect Jan. 1, are targeted at hiring and retaining younger information technology workers and are tailored to pay competitively in the nation’s high-tech corridors.

ZDNet’s Peter Coffee comments on the Florida court ruling that forced Yahoo to reveal the identities of chat room participants who had criticized a company executive. “Freedom on the Internet may be like freedom of the press: You have to own a press to use it freely, and you have to own a Web server to be safe from others’ actions that might reveal your identity.”

The two top executives at Bertelsmann AG’s BMG Entertainment division have resigned, apparently in disagreement with CEO Thomas Middelhoff’s plans at restructuring online distribution. Read the bulletin from ZDNet. Update: the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the two executives were “ousted” from BMG and will be replaced by Rudi Gassner, a company veteran who quit in January after a long-lasting feud with the two departing executives.

From a Wall Street Journal report on ZDNet: Federal antitrust enforcers made progress toward an agreement with merger partners America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc. that would force the companies to open high-speed cable lines to one or more Internet competitors in each city served by Time Warner, people close to the talks say.

PC World asked the question: where do the American presidential candidates stand on technology issues? “While we expected some of the candidates to agree on a few of the issues, we were surprised by the degree to which all six candidates — Al Gore, George W. Bush, the Green Party’s Ralph Nader, the Libertarians’ Harry Browne, Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, and Natural Law/Independent candidate John Hagelin — expressed the same opinions.”

Later this month, ICANN is expected to approve a series of new top-level domains to supplement the well-known .com, .net, and .org suffixes. The organization recently changed its bylaws in a manner that will prevent its five newest members from voting on the proposal. ICANN claims the rules were changed for the sake of consistency with the groups’ annual California meeting; critics contend that the change was made to gag two of the new board members who were elected by Internet users. The full story is at Interactive Week.

According to a followup report from the IDG News Service at Network World Fusion, a cracker has once again gained access to Microsoft’s corporate networks. The individual claiming to have infiltrated Microsoft’s servers claims that the company did not install a patch for a known exploit in its Internet Information Server software package. A Microsoft spokesman has confirmed the break-in.