Once mighty but now mighty struggling Gateway is planning to buy EMachines for $200 million dollars. That’s a lot of green to sell low end machines in very high end stores. Or will Gateway simply kill the stores and use the EMachines brand for a nice mail order comeback? Sounds like an expensive way to kick start the cow boxes again.

Who Said eCommerce is Dead Dept: Amazon reported its first ever net profit of $35.3 milion. A nice upswing compared to last year’s $149 million loss. Way to go Jeff & Co.

According to a recent report from Reuters, “A new wireless technology with enough bandwidth to carry cable television signals from a wall-mounted outlet to a TV anywhere in the home could be on the market as early as next year.” Dubbed Ultra Wideband, the new standard is able to handle larger amounts of data than Bluetooth or WiFi. Then again, the standard is coming from an “alliance” led by T.I. and our theory is that anytime you see the word alliance, add five years at least to the time estimates given.

One in twelve emails contains a new worm called “Mydoom” or “Novarg” and all over the world, IT departments are struggling to keep up with what is shaping up to be the largest mass mailing worm yet. The worm is apparently programmed to flood SCO’s website in protest over recent plans to charge Linux users over a copyright case the company has initiated.

According to the BBC, “The king of computer software Bill Gates is to receive an honorary knighthood from the Queen for his contribution to enterprise in the UK.” As an American Bill can’t use the actual term “Sir” - you have to be a real Brit for that, but Bill is thrilled.

On a Roll Dept: Dutch firm Philips Electronics said on Monday it was preparing to mass-produce a slim, book-sized display panel onto which consumers could download newspapers and magazines — then roll up and put away. The 5-inch display, which can show detailed images, can be rolled up into a pen-sized holder. If connected to a mobile phone, it can also be used to download web pages, a book or email. Source: Reuters

Determined to make barcodes a thing of the past, IBM announced a partnership with Philips to sell RFID chips. Philips Semiconductor will manufacture the chips, and IBM will create the computer services and systems, which spells BIG BUCKS in our book.

NASA has lost contact with the Spirit rover on Mars. Although receiving an acknowledgement signal, NASA has been unable to initiate full communications with the Spirit rover. Experts hope that the problem lies in software which can be remedied by a system reboot and software reload.

Unofficially, some believe that NASA’s problem occurred all too conveniently while Spirit was drilling through a rock looking for mineral and oil deposits…