Heiko Ebens, a Merrill Lynch director, claimed, that hedge fund industry has ceased to deliver higher than average returns and can be mostly replaced by index trackers. Merrill Lynch's trackers, for instance.
There is an open source .NET wrapper for (former) SleepyCat Berkeley DB file database system - you can find it on SourceForge.
The chances for another interest rate rise this month are not very high, but still possible, according to Reuters. The house prices are growing, and even if we are spared this month, before the end of the summer the interest will almost definitely go up. It is hard to say whether this will actually cause the prices to go down - the rate has already been increased a few times, but it seems to have very little effect on the market.
Mozilla and eBay are working on a way to improve shopping experience of Firefox users, accessing eBay's auction sites in some of the countries, according to this press release.