The battle to create ultrafast networking standards for the home is about to speed up following a
decision yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

In the limitless scope of the Internet, it’s little more than a blip: The next time thousands of music fans check their e-mail, they’ll find a message telling them about an alternative rock band and offering a chance to listen to one of its songs. From DallasNews.com.

LinuxPR.com announces that Jabber.com has formed a technical advisory board and appointed its first three members: Craig
Burton, Rohit Khare and Stephen Williams.

It’s every hacker’s dream, and thankfully, it’s getting more common every day: being paid to work on your favourite piece of free software. But it’s also pretty fraught with controversy, and especially if you happen to be the maintainer of the project: accusations will fly over conflicts of interest, political manipulation, and all kinds of other dirty whisperings. It’s hard – if not impossible – to keep on the right side of everyone, and so the most important thing to do is keep yourself honest. So how do you take that dream job without losing your impartiality? –Kelly McNeill

A random sampling of developer screenshots shows a polyglot mishmash of window managers, desktops, and themes. To most folks like this, standard is a dirty word. They tend to view Linux as a geek playground in which there are no hard-and-fast rules. Well, this is all well and good for the minority of users, but for most people (including most programmers) standards are an essential part of making the computing experience worthwhile. –Kelly McNeill

CNET.com reports: With a continuing shortage of a tiny, obscure part known as a tantalum capacitor, electronics component companies are
trying to pitch an alternative: ceramics.

Just when the marketplace thinks the company can’t succeed without wrapping its arms around the status quo, it comes back stronger. From Forbes.com.

It’s midnight in San Francisco. You know about two events at opposite ends of town. A
wrong decision could ruin everything, producing an evening that fizzles like a flat gin and
tonic. Which is the better gathering, asks SiliconValley.com?

Bloomberg.com reports that Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, filed a
new brief in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco on an existing charge that
Via Technologies Inc., the world’s No. 2 chipset maker, is infringing on its
patents.

Aimster, a new Napster-like program that piggybacks on America Online’s Instant Messaging service
and could be the biggest nightmare to date for studios trying to stop film and music swapping online, said it has held
initial talks with Intel to forge ties. From CNET.com.