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Wired News reports that Connectix has won their preliminary hearing, and the right to ship their Playstation emulator for the Macintosh. Bill Gates and his wife have donated an additional 3.3 billion dollars worth of Microsoft stock to their two foundations. While I may dislike Microsoft’s business tactics, and their products, I respect his generosity. He’s always said that he plans on donating most of his wealth before he dies, and I’m glad to see him following through on that. The New York Times reports. [registration required] ...

News.com reports that MindSpring did, in fact, pull the plug on the anti-abortion fanatics who ran The Nuremberg Files. Declan McCullagh lets his true feelings be known with regard to the MS v. DOJ case in Intellectual Capital. Not that you couldn’t figure out his slant from the tone of his trial coverage in Wired News. Microsoft is denying the rumors about their encouraging employees to post to ZDNet forums using fake identities. The story never did have the ring of truth, although their plans for carpet bombing op-ed pages with fake letters last year were well documented in the L.A. Times. Anyway, see Wired News for more. ...

The onerous Nuremberg Files anti-abortion hit list appears to be gone. Perhaps MindSpring pulled the plug on them. Finally, a story covering Microsoft’s style sheet patent. In the Wired News story, Microsoft tells people that they have nothing to worry about because they only use their patents defensively. Now I can rest easily … This flotsam came in from the Interesting People mailing list: someone has posted to the ZDNet forums that Microsoft is encouraging its employees to contribute to online forums under false identities to push the company’s cause in the DOJ case. Take this one with a grain of salt. ...

PC Week is reporting that Windows 98 and Windows NT may not be merged for the next release after all. Apparently problems getting some Windows 98 features like the Direct X game drivers, and plug and play, working under the NT kernel could push the great convergence out a release. Chances are, Microsoft will call both products Windows 2000 anyway. Did you know that people still play MUDs? I thought that they were all being killed off by the recent spate of multiplayer graphical games. The Mud Connector has a pretty good list of active MUDs. I never really played very many, but for awhile, I was really into playing Genocide. ...

New entry in the author’s journal today. Microsoft is accused of falsifying a video that they showed in court on Monday. The facts in the case have looked bad all along for Microsoft, but falsifying the video probably dealt their credibility a blow that they can’t recover from. In other news, the DOJ will introduce a Microsoft patent application into evidence in which the Microsoft employees applying for the patent make no bones about the fact that the operating system and browser are entirely separate products. ...

Found at CamWorld: Jake Sexton’s list of news trends. After looking around further, I’ve decided that the whole site is worth a visit. The zine is called NewsWatch. The Economist weighs in with the unsurprising prediction that Internet stocks will fall back to earth. The single best sentence in the article is, “Whereas investors on Wall Street are merely exuberant, the casino capitalists who spend seven or eight hours a day at their PCs trading Internet shares appear to be stark, staring mad.” ...

The Industry Standard runs an article on federal sponsorship of the Internet. Bounce this one off of your libertarian friends. See, someone else hates Microsoft, too. Brett Glass has an FAQ on the Pentium III serial number issue posted over at ZDNet.

Saint Isadore of Seville, born in the year 556, is under consideration by the Roman Catholic Church for patron sainthood of the Internet. The New Republic reports on some potential lies told under oath by none other than Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, the former pest exterminator turned Congressional extortionist from Texas. In this case, he lied in an attempt to screw over his business partner, so at least it really wasn’t about sex. ...

Is anyone else tracking the similarities between the Microsoft trial and the impeachment trial in the Senate? Today, they’re fighting over public testimony in both trials. Microsoft just lost in appeals court, and Bill Gates’ videotaped deposition will be released to the public. I don’t think he’ll come across as well as Clinton did when they released his deposition back in September. A potential smoking gun in the Microsoft trial. [registration required] ...

Screenshot Fun! The New York Times unintentionally poses the question we all want answered: Were Janet Reno and Bill Gates separated at birth? Notice the ad … if you don’t like the way the New York Times covers Microsoft, just get the word straight from the horse’s mouth.