Today MySQL, the world’s most popular open-source database, has agreed to be acquired by Sun Microsystems for around $1 billion. This is big news for the Swedish MySQL that started in 1995, and is a rocker for the open-source world.MySQL is a staple element in many of today’s most popular websites like Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile; and popular blogging platforms like Wordpress. Sun press release

Red Hat Enterprise Linux will soon be available through Amazon’s ‘Elastic Computing Cloud’ (EC2) online service by the year’s end but is in private beta currently. Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Amazon EC2 will be a web-scale virtual computing environment, and will have everything needed to develop and host applications: compute capacity, bandwidth, and storage.

Pricing for the Red Hat EC2 option will cost $19 per month plus $0.21, $0.53 or $0.94 per hour, depending on computing and storage capacity, plus $0.11 per gigabyte transferred in and 19 cents per gigabyte transferred out.

Each computer being rented is actually a virtual machine, a slice of a physical server that’s running several using virtualization software. The ‘Small’ Red Hat Enterprise Linux instance gets you 1.7GB of memory, 160GB of storage, and Amazon’s virtual equivalent of one 32-bit processor core; ‘Large’ gives you 7.5GB of memory, 850GB of storage, and two 64-bit cores; ‘Extra-Large’ gives 15GB of memory, 1690GB of storage, and four 64-bit cores. Press release

Our favorite kingpin BitTorrent tracker and hero, The Pirate Bay, is in the process of creating a new P2P protocol. But why? Brokep, a Pirate Bay top dog, was quoted saying, “I don’t think Bittorrent as a protocol will survive much longer.” Brokep also stated, “The biggest problem is that [the BT protocol is] owned by the Bittorrent company, which develops new versions of it. So we don’t have any input as users to say what we want in the protocol. And Bittorrent is funded by companies which we don’t necessarily like as well.” Good points indeed. The new protocol may be finished and released sometime next year. Via Tech.Blorge

Thanks Larry!

Now this is an interesting (and somewhat funny) application that could be put to great use - Snapmania’s Tourist Remover. Using multiple photos of the same scene, Tourist Remover attempts to blend these together and remove unwanted interference from your captured moment in time. The online app is free, with up to 100 MB of online storage. Paid storage upgrades are available too. Hand-held shots will work ok, but shots taken wiht a tripod are better. Also, too many people in a photo are harder to get rid of. Via Photojojo

In a major European Commission survey of 27 European Union member countries, they found that kids expect to keep downloading illegally and are more afraid of accidentally downloading a virus than being sued. Another point says kids are more aware of “potential online risks as security, viruses, identity theft and potential dangerous contact with strangers than parents imagine.” And the kids seem to know how to handle the situations. Reuters full story

The Discovery Channel has launched a pretty cool new web-based game called Sharkrunners. The game lets you interact with real-life sharks being tracked with GPS so you can get a feel of what it’s like to be a shark-tracking marine biologist. The game is constant and continues even when you are logged out of the system. But you can also choose to be alerted of a shark encounter via SMS or email. The point of the game is to collect as much shark data as possible, along with getting funding upgrading your boat, and gaining crew members.

The new 2007 Digital Media Survey by Entertainment Media Research concludes that “Illegal Music Downloads” are now at an all time high. They claim that social networks with open music sharing type environments, paired with easy access are a major reason for why illegal downloads are taking off more than ever. Another reason they say is the rising cost of “legal music downloads” - which I think is the main factor. Read [Telegraph.co.uk]

After the shootings at Virginia Tech, eBay is updating their “Firearms, Weapons and Knives Policy” by disallowing listings of any “part that is required for the firing of a gun.” including “items like bullet tips, brass casings and shells, barrels, slides, cylinders, magazines, firing pins, trigger assemblies, etc.” This decision was made after learning the Virginia Tech gunman purchased several empty ammunition clips through eBay about three weeks prior to the attack. I think this is a great idea, and it would be even better for online auction houses to stay out of any kind of weapons related deals all together. eBay Announcement

For their first ever acquisition Facebook as scooped up Parakey. A start-up from a few former Firefox developers, Parakey offers seamless web-desktop integration acting as a hybrid “a personal operating system.” It’s been super secretive for the past two years, with this latest news giving it the most PR. No finicial or other details have been released, but we’re sure Facebook has some nice plans for this. Read [VentureBeat]

Formerly known as Democracy Player, the free internet TV platform has been revamped and renamed ‘Miro.’ They say it’s now more stable and focused on community to “build the open video movement.”

It’s still free and they emphasize open source and open-standards, as the player is compatible with any host that provides video rss, alternate channel guides, and able to search multiple video sites. Miro