CNET News.com reports on the latest investment announcement from handheld leader Palm. The company has invested an as yet to be disclosed sum in San Francisco startup Kenamea, a company that “helps provide a speedier link between mobile devices and the servers where companies store most programs and data.”

From The Register: “A software package which can keep the CIA’s legions of snoops
safe from detection as they trawl the Net in search of international
evildoers ought to be good enough for your daily dogtrot through
cyberspace. That’s the pitch for SafeWeb’s soon-to-be-released
product Triangle Boy, which it is claimed will make it possible for
one to surf the Web without leaving a trace.”

ICANN was supposed to usher in a new Internet era; one where the government would step out of the network picture and allow private enterprise to chart the course of the new economy. Three years later, however, the Department of Commerce is still maintaining oversight of the organization, giving the United States government “a powerful veto over key decisions about the expansion of the Internet.” ZDNet News reports.

LinuxPlanet’s Lou Grinzo weighs in with his comments on KDE’s tempest over Ximian’s practice of buying ads on Google that display when someone is searching for KDE-related items. All is well now, but “in that spirit of having just dodged a
bullet, let me provide everyone concerned with a little free advice from someone (me)
who’s been through the industry meat grinder a few more times than most of the people
on these two projects, not to mention the countless hordes getting riled up about this:
Shut up, grow up, and stop fighting each other instead of your common enemies.”

“What is it about UDE that makes it so special? Aesthetically, UDE is not as full of eye-candy as GNOME, though there are some interesting looking themes available. There are also some workflow occurrences that make dealing with UDE a bit like dealing with my seven-year old: smart, but apt to get wacky on you every once in a while.” Full story at LinuxPlanet.

The first Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering, part of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering, will take place on Tuesday, May 15 in Toronto, Ontario. The workshop seeks to “articulate Open Source Software as a Software Engineering paradigm.” Those wishing to participate can find more information on the ICSE workshops page or through the Call for Papers page.

FreeOS.com concludes its coverage on intrusion detection systems with an overview of Logcheck. The program was designed to check system log files for unusual activity and system security issues.

The Register reports that “Alcatel has at long last Linux support for its SpeedTouch USB ADSL modem.” The move by the French telecom concern may have been prompted by a UK petition drive that drew over 800 signatures demanding Linux support.

A diverse group of privacy activists including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Eagle Forum gathered together on Monday to ask members of the US Congress to sign a privacy pledge. As MSNBC reports, the pledge “outlines the foundation for strong privacy legislation favoring consumers over industry concerns.” So far, Congress has been all talk and no action on privacy-related issues.

“President Bush will likely return Charles A. James to his former position as the Department of Justice’s antitrust chief, according to press reports Tuesday.” So reports Network World Fusion, noting that James last year remarked that “consumers have benefited by there being a common software platform and that a break-up of Microsoft would cause a “divergence” of that common platform.”