There has been a lot of speculation on whether a deal with Yahoo/Microsoft will happen. I feel that this merger will happen and have outlined several reasons as to why this deal is almost a sure thing at this point.

Top 5 Reason Why the Yahoo/Microsoft Deal will Happen:

1) Microsoft needs Yahoo more than Yahoo needs Microsoft. To compete with the threat of Google and other Internet giants Microsoft would benefit huge from a deal like this. It would catapult them into the #1 Internet player ahead of Google instantaneously. Microsoft will pony up big to gain this status.

Looks like Microsoft may be working hard to get a lightweight version of Windows XP available for Eee PC. Asus will begin "officially" offering Eee PC buyers a choice between Linux and Windows.

Asus CEO Jerry Shen predicts that more than half of the Eee PCs sold this year will run XP instead of Linux.

The federal government is starting to realize the real threats of botnets around the world. U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff speaking at the RSA conference said that the US government has launched a cyber security "Manhattan Project."

The US is realizing that online attacks can be a form of "devastating warfare", and equivalent in damage to "physical destruction of the worst kind."

IBM has unveiled a new supercomputer called Hydro-Cluster that uses water to cool down the device and reduce energy consumption. IBM claims that data centers using Hydro-Cluster supercomputers can reduce their energy consumption by 40 percent and use 80 percent less cooling. They estimate that water can be up to 4,000-times more effective in cooling computer systems than air.

Virginia has become the first state to require that all public schools teach "Internet Safety" classes for all grade levels. Their goal is to educate young Web users from the dangers associated with using the Internet.

This shows us that Virginia is able to adapt with the changing times. They realize the public danger the Internet can pose to a community and have taken some action to mitigate the risk. This is the right thing to do.

The NYTimes had an interesting article discussing some of the reasons why we can still find old technologies like the mainframe still kicking around in many business environment.

Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD+ Standards Board) declared that BD+ is so strong that it would not be breached for at least 10 years.

Well a company named Slysoft and makers of AnyDVD claim to have cracked BD+ encryption (only eight months after Doherty's statement/dare) and have included the decryption tool in the latest release of their software. Slysoft claims that Blu-ray owners will now be able to "backup" their disks using AnyDVD.

Larry Lessig, a law professor at Stanford hopes that a 'Wikipedia' approach can help change the way politics are played. He wants to use collaborative software to keep track of political positions candidates take and hold them accountable to pledges they make.

CNET has rated the most current beta versions of IE8, Opera, and Safari and has rated Firefox the best.

Some of the characteristics giving it its top rating include performance in memory handling (also reported in this village post), the amount and quality of plugins, their new bookmarking system, and the ease of use.

Since the announcement that Toshiba was giving up its HD-DVD format prices of Blu-Ray players have risen sharply.

A quick price scan from BestBuy.com comparing Blu-ray players prices on January 1st vs. March 12th show a ~14-30% increase for some of the most popular brands:

* Sony’s BDP-S300 rose 30% ($307 to $399)
* Panasonic’s DMP-BD30K rose 19% ($399 to $449)
* Samsung’s BD-P1400 rose 18% ($329 to $399)

Ever work on a computer that doesn't have Microsoft Office installed and you need to view an Excel sheet? MS now makes a MS Excel viewer . The new version also support xlsx format.

You can view _and_ print spreadsheets created with any version of Microsoft Excel. You can also copy data from Excel Viewer to another program.

Edsor3
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http://www.outervillage.com

A judge ordered wikileaks.org shut down. Wikileaks.org is a site dedicated to allowing users to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments. A kind of spin-off of wikipedia, wikileaks.org is a community censored and edited site that tries to discourage unethical behavior of both corporations and governments. This shutdown will surely test the 1st amendment and will have large legal ramifications throughout all of cyberspace.

Google recently released a prototype of their Android platform . For those not familiar with Android it is basically a small operating system that runs on mobile phones. The OS comes with prepackaged software like maps, browser, database, bluetooth, audio, and camera functions.

Looks like Yahoo! grew a pair over the weekend and decided to reject the Microsoft bid. They are basically trying to get a "God Father" offer, i.e. an "Offer they can't refuse". This opens up the bidding and hopefully some other names with deep pockets step up. Possible contenders include Google, Apple, or a big media type like ABC/CBS.

The winner will instantly become the number #1 viewed site across the US (according to http://www.quantcast.com/).

Baseline has published the top 25 data security breaches of 2007 . This is just the reported cases. I'm sure the actual number of breaches is much higher than this. This number will climb every year and the need for better security measures will always be there.

The top three data breaches in terms of affected records include:
1) TJX (19M+ affected records)
2) Dai Nippon Printing Company (8.6M records)
3) Fidelity National Information Services Check (8.5M records)