Daily news beat for March 3, 2008

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Mar 3, 20081 min

In case anyone thought the company merely changed its mind on the matter, CEO Steve Ballmer says Microsoft still has Yahoo in its sights, but declined to confirm whether it is preparing for a proxy fight.

In a move one official said has nothing to do with the proposed Yahoo deal, the Redmond giant on Monday is set to unwrap two new search products based on SharePoint that advance the company’s enterprise, inside-the-firewall search.

The Cobra language was made available as open source, its developer said, who also added a Subversion-based repository.

Looking to bolster its presence in the realm, Sun Microsystems hires two prominent Python developers, and responded with “stay tuned” when asked about the possibility of adding Python and Jython support to NetBeans.

After a judge lifts the two-week old injunction against it, Wikileaks is back in business, a fact that is sure to please privacy and civil rights activists, but not Swiss Bank Julius Baer.

And Apple gets slammed over programming secrets when a Firefox developer uncovered dozens of secret tweaks built into WebKit that make Apple’s own applications perform better with its operating systems than competitors’ programs.