Earlier this year, Microsoft offered to purchase search engine company Yahoo, however, the board of directors of Yahoo shot the offer down beause it 'massively' undervalued the company. This ignited an acquisition dance that took a few months, and rumours were abound as to what either of the two would do next.

Engadget got the chance to sit down with Jonathan Schwartz, the pony-tailed CEO of Sun Microsystems. Being the gadget blog that they are, Engadget asked Schwartz about the long-missing JavaFX Mobile platform Sun has promised, Java on the iPhone, and competing with Microsoft as an open source vendor.

One of the oldest Linux distributions, Slackware, has pushed out another release. "Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.1! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.1 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.0) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user."

One of the biggest problems facing the European Union today is the fact that within its borders, 23 languages are spoken. This means that all the important documents have to be translated by a whole army of translators, which costs the taxpayer more than 1 billion Euros a year - and companies trading within the EU spend millions more. The EU-funded TC-STAR project aims to tackle this issue with technology: a system that eats speech in one language, and outputs that same speech in another.

Speaking of soap operas, there's one soap opera in the technology world that has been going on for so long that nobody really seems to know why it was ever started, whatever all the different moves have been over the years, or whoever lost or won which battle. Just like a true soap opera, you can just jump right in the middle of it and feel like you've always been part of the regular audience. The SCO saga is such a case.

First theorized in the 1970's as the fourth basic circuit element, a practical memristor implementation has finally been discovered at HP Labs. If practical manufacturing can be scaled up, memristor technology could become the new standard for computer memory -- memory that combines the speed of DRAM, the persistence of Flash memory, and the bit density of hard drives. In addition, memristors can work as analog as well as digital devices, and hold promise as the basis for building neural networks

The soap surrounding PsyStar, the company that offers a Mac clone for sale, just keeps on running. After the initial launch, the company was plagued by doubt and mystery surrounding its actual existence, but soon after videos started popping up of the OpenComputer out in the wild, beyond the company itself. Thanks to CNet, the company may now have fully redeemed itself.

Security consultant Howard Fosdick has contributed the latest entry in the 2008 OSNews Article Contest: a highly detailed examination of security and privacy on the Windows platform, and how to use free software tools and a little knowledge to protect your privacy online.

While the technologies used on the web have always been mostly free, with non-free technologies delegated to non-essential parts of the net, this has been changing fast, lately. The popularity of YouTube has demonstrated the pervasiveness of Adobe's Flash, to an extent where not having Flash is one of the big downsides to any alternative operating system. And to possibly make matters worse, Microsoft is pushing its proprietary Silverlight technology. The founder of Mozilla Europe, Tristan Nitot, warns for "the dangers of the proprietary web".

Despite the fact that Windows is the world's most-used desktop operating system, it lacks certain features and gimmicks that other operating systems do have (no, really?). PCWorld made a list of 18 features Windows should have, but in fact doesn't. While some are spot on, others are a bit of a stretch.

The (unstable and development-oriented only) filesystem Btrfs version 0.14 has been released. "Btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration. Initially developed by Oracle, Btrfs is licensed under the GPL and open for contribution from anyone."

After being released to manufacturing last week, SP3 for XP is now available as either a standalone installer (direct download link) or at Windows Update. PC Magazine has coverage of the new service pack, including launch details, a hands-on review, slideshows, and expert tips.

Some more information regarding PsyStar and its Opencomputer have surfaced, that try to dispel some of the doubts surrounding the company. Last week, the company posted a video online that supposedly showed the inside of the company, as wel as a bunch of OpenComputers running Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows XP. In addition, a Gizmodo reader has sent a video to Gizmodo where he shows off his OpenComputer.

In October 2006, Hans Reiser, creator of the ReiserFS filesystem, was arrested under the suspicion of the murder of his wife, Nina, who had disappeared off the face of the earth after dropping their two children off at Hans' home. The two were divorced, and fighting a legal battle over ownership of the Namesys company and the custody of their children. Even though the body was never found, he has been declared guilty of first degree murder.