The Chinese government hasn't — at least in the last century or so — had the public perception of being particularly open. From infamous anti-protest activities to the Great Firewall of China the ruling powers have a history of keeping pretty tight control of who hears what and how they hear it. It's possible that things are changing, however, as an official-looking profile of Premier Wen Jiabao has turned up on Facebook.

Just about everyone who has shopped for a computer online knows that Dell will promise the sun, moon, stars, and a free kidney to snare shoppers for their made -to-mass-measure systems. What a sizable number in New York, and we suspect just about everywhere else, have learned is that Dell is just as good at finding a reason to dodge their doubtful deals — and now the courts have discovered it as well.

Facebook — the No. 2 social network and perennial hangout of the college set — has a habit of exercising strict, sometimes iron-fisted control over user data, particularly who — including the users themselves — gets to use it. If the rumor mill has it right, though, that's about to change, as Facebook is reportedly on the brink of releasing their Facebook Platform under an Open Source license.

Those who sell on eBay generally know the elements that make a listing sizzle: catchy titles, detailed descriptions, clear photographs, quick responses to buyer queries, etc. There is one less generally mentioned, though, but clearly as important: "If you're listing your kids, expect trouble."

Just when we thought the OOXML standard war was over — or overdue, if the ISO was paying any attention to the rules — it's back, and it's going to get ugly. South Africa has sounded the call to arms, and fired the first shot at the shoddy process with a formal appeal alleging the irregular irregularities have brought shame on the ISO, and cast "the processes enshrined in the Directives into disrepute."

Everyone — except perhaps those who have been living under a rock — knows that the Chinese government censors the internet. Nobody, except the Chinese government, is happy about it, but it's what they do. However, when they try to censor an 8.0 Mw earthquake, it gets a little bit strange, to say the least.

Yahoo — the embattled search giant that just barely fought off assimilation by Microsoft early this month, has turned tail in at least a partial retreat from the closing forces of Carl Icahn.

The One Laptop Per Child program has had a run of bad luck lately, including high-profile conflicts with corporate backers and rampant hemorrhaging of key talent. Now the focus of their PR campaign is the next version of the XO — but can it make up for the multitude of misfires?

Just months after pulling every dirty trick known to man out of the bag to secure ISO approval for OOXML — the terminally broken document format that even Microsoft itself can't get to work — Evil Incorporated has now announced that

These days, just about everything has an age-appropriate rating on it. Movies, video games, even toys come with a sticker declaring that somebody infinitely more aware than the average consumer has approved that particular product for use by those X-years and up. Now, apparently there aren't enough ratings in the offline world, so the raiders — er, raters — are coming to a download near you, at least if your downloads source from the UK.

The UK is up in arms this week — complete with torches and pitchforks — over the latest plan by the increasingly unpopular government's plan to build a database to hold copies of every email sent in the UK along with recordings of every phone call in the country.

Microsoft's maniacal desire for an even greater monopoly has brought it back to the table with Yahoo, and now details are starting to leak out about just what the new deal might look like.

Nearly two years ago, a vicious practical joke ended in tragedy when 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after receiving hateful messages via MySpace — messages posted by the mother of a former friend and others, posing as a 16-year-old boy. Now, the method used to bring the perpetrators to justice threatens to create even more damage.

The One Laptop Per Child program has been in a steadily increasing tailspin over the past few months, from dumping multi-billion dollar sponsors to driving away key staff. Now it appears the whole project is about three steps away from the handbasket.

It seems like everybody suddenly acquired an interest in Yahoo last week, with two different parties launching proxy bids, Google continuing to collude on an advertising deal, and Microsoft suddenly deciding they're still interested. About the only group who haven't been sniffing around Yahoo HQ is AOL, but 10:1 it's just that they've been too busy.

The former Colombia Broadcasting System — better known to viewers as CBS — has decided it's not doing enough to reach the technology market, and with a swish of the pen, have found a remedy: Buy CNET for just under $2 billion.

Internet Service Provider Charter Communications has cooked up a new scheme to fill the coffers, and are rolling it out with a letter campaign to customers advising that the new policy will be pennies over privacy.

A vulnerability report hit the wire yesterday announcing that a commonly used security package contained a Debian-specific vulnerability rendering it guessable by hackers.

MySpace — the social networking site raking in mountains of cash on the backs of indie bands and emo kids everywhere — has found a new way to fill their coffers: spam. No, they're not sending it, they're suing — and it's making them a bundle, at least on paper.

By now, we've all heard about — and grown tired of — the anticlimactic end to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. The new news, however, is the ultra-secret to-be-determined deal between Yahoo and Google.