The social networking community is beginning to look beleaguered, with many of the top social sites besieged with user, legal, and PR troubles. Now Facebook finds itself back in the hot-seat, with news that UK regulators are concerned about the site's privacy practices.

A deleteriously-clever new bit of malware is invading the United Kingdom, and — in a feat not seen since 1066 — appears to be unstoppable.

It's not every day that a U.S. state decides to declare a federal law non-applicable. It was, however, Friday when the Governor of Montana decided to do just that, and to bring seventeen other states along with him, over — of all things — drivers licenses.

Dateline: Redmond. A Microsoft employee sits in his office, sweating. Suddenly, a robotic overload explodes through the door, accuses the terrified worker of fraud, and expels him from the building, based on the obvious guilt identified by his sweating. The broken air conditioner in the room is overlooked, because nobody programmed it into the overlord's system. Far-fetched? Probably. However, it's a lot more possible than it was a week ago, with the news that Microsoft has submitted plans to the Patent and Trademark Office for a system that would provide all-encompassing data about workers.

Myspace is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world, and with that popularity comes a lot of attention. Unfortunately for the site, much of the attention this week has been focused on controversy and crime.

Playing with toys isn't always fun, as users of the popular social-networking site Facebook found out with the news that the owners of Scrabble — toy manufacturers Mattel and Hasbro — have requested that a popular Scrabble-like application be removed from the site.

The former CEO of networking manufacturer Brocade, Inc. was hit with the strongest sentence handed down to date in the ongoing trials of Silicon Valley executives caught falsifying company records to boost stock option payoffs.

If news days follow themes, then today's theme is acquisitions, as Oracle has announced their intent to buy BEA Systems, Inc. for $8.5 billion, the second billion-dollar acquisition of the day.

The last few days — indeed, the last few weeks — have been filled with much speculation over what Steve Jobs would produce as Apple's newest and neatest offering during his "Stevenote" at the Macworld exposition. He certainly didn't disappoint.

Buying an open-source offering is the hot thing in Silicon Valley these days, and Sun Microsystems doesn't want to be left out. According to today's announcement, Sun will be picking up the open-source database company MySQL AB for a cool $1 billion.

While Intel — the world's leading microprocessor manufacturer — is facing investigations by the European Commission, South Korea, and Japan over it's trade practices, the U.S. has been a relative safe haven. That's all changed, with the announcement last week that New York State will begin an investigation into whether the company's competition tactics against AMD went too far.

Sometimes, it seems like some people just won't learn from the past. Such appears to be the case with Microsoft, as the European Commission announced this week that they will begin another investigation into Microsoft's anti-competition practices, just months after having closed the last.

The torches and pitchforks came out Friday with the announcement of a new domain registration policy at Network Solutions that has garnered allegations of engaging in the very act it claims to prevent.

First there was The Rumble in the Jungle. Then came the Thrilla in Manila. Now it's time for the Wake in Salt Lake, as the trial in SCO's infamous lawsuit against Novell has been set for April 29th, and may well be the death knell for the failing company.

KDE fans, now is the time you have been waiting for! The long-awaited, eagerly-anticipated, it's-going-to-knock-your-socks-off-when-it-gets-here KDE 4.0 is now available.

In what may well be the most brilliant government decision in history, the UK agency tasked with overseeing information technology in schools has issued a report barring adoption of Microsoft's Windows Vista and Office 2007 in British schools.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with a bill in collections knows it isn't a fun process, but apparently for the FBI, it can even become a threat to national security.

The Department of Homeland Security — the government body tasked with maintaining security in the United States — wants to leave no stone unturned, and to do so, has uncovered security holes in nearly two hundred Open Source projects.

The One Laptop Per Child project has been all the rage lately, from the infamous split with Intel to reviews of the Give One, Get One systems now arriving to users — including one by our own David A Lane. Now there's even more news, and as usual, it's wild.

After a series of attacks on state government websites last Friday, administrators of Pennsylvania's web sites pulled the plug, rendering the sites inaccessible for hours.