Columnists’ corner: “Innovation rules,” and 2005 proved it, writes Tom Yager. To that end, he adds that it occurs naturally but that “it would be a shame if innovation fell out of fashion again because those players that can’t do it right convince the market that mediocrity is ‘industry standard’ and safe.”The news beat: The U.S. antitrust waiting period for Cisco’s planned acquisition of Scientific American, seen as a critical milestone, has passed without regulators taking any action. AMD gets a new Chinese PC partner Tsinghua Tongfang, a study by The Radicati Group finds that Microsoft still leads in e-mail, and RIM warns BlackBerry users of vulnerabilities that could allow an attack that prevents users from reading attachments. [N.B. Cisco actually bought Scientific Atlanta, not one of my favorite magazines Scientific American.]Quoteworthy: It’s widely acknowledged that Wikipedia’s radically low barrier to entry helped fuel its explosive early growth. That’s now been ratcheted up a notch. Only registered users can create new topics. But anyone can still edit an existing article and many registered Wikipedians operate pseudonymously. These freedoms are an essential part of the culture. — Jon Udell, in Wikipedia, competition and the future. Software Development