In releasing a set of benchmarking security standards for Windows 2000 professional, the standards' creators said their chief goal of this move -- and others to follow -- is to get PC and software vendors to ship systems with user-specific security standards in place.
The words and phrases used to described spam by people at a Global Internet Project conference today were a lot like the subject lines of pushy e-mails: stark and attention getting.
The last witness for Microsoft finished testifying today, a computer scientist who claimed it was technically infeasible for the software giant to produce a stripped-down version of Windows.
In a private antitrust lawsuit filed in federal court this week, Sun Microsystems is seeking more than $US1 billion in damages from Microsoft, as well as a preliminary injunction forcing the software giant to include Sun's Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in the Windows XP operating system.
Online retailers did a much better job of meeting their shipment commitments to customers during last month's holiday season than the year before, according to an official at the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) who recently spoke at a seminar for e-commerce companies.
Microsoft and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) last week announced their selections of the attorneys who will represent them in the upcoming appeal of the breakup order issued last year against the software vendor, with Microsoft saying it plans to rely on a lawyer named Richard Urowsky who successfully represented it in earlier appeals.
The problem with last week's decision by the organisation that manages the Internet domain name system to add seven new top level domains (TLDs) is that no one really knows whether it's a gift or a curse.
For Supervalu, a major food distributor and operator of some 500 retail stores, developing alternative electronic-payment systems has become a bottom-line issue.
United Parcel Service of America plans to launch a beta project using XML to exchange shipment, tracking and rate information with select business customers. But XML file size is a looming issue. The carrier manifest, one of the largest files the Atlanta-based company receives via electronic data interchange and Internet-based data streams, is now no more than 100MB in size.
Microsoft struck back last week at the Government's plan to break up the company, warning of "massive disruption" to its operations and the possibility of its employees "leaving in droves", while accusing the Government of embarking on an "extreme" and "radical" plan that isn't supported by either history or the law.
The most difficult problem of the Microsoft case has always been the question of remedies. Now that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is nearing a verdict and is almost certain to find the software giant guilty of some violations, he must decide what remedy to impose. The goal of remedies, say antitrust experts, is not to punish a company but to restore competition. But how the judge will go about achieving that has been the proverbial million-dollar question in this case.
By late morning yesterday in the US, the New Year had arrived in about one-third of the world, but the year 2000 computer problem had failed to trigger shutdowns of critical infrastructure systems -- utilities, transportation and financial -- in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and other industrialised nations in that region, said White House and other government officials.
In an unusual twist in a trial that has had many, Microsoft trial Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said yesterday he would release the first part of his two-part decision in the antitrust case on "a Friday", not necessarily this Friday, next Friday or the Friday after that, but on "a Friday". Jackson's announcement was posted on the US District Court's Web site.
In the belief that Microsoft will either lose its antitrust case or settle, antitrust experts, industry groups and some software businesses met last week to debate possible remedies in this historic case.
Microsoft spent this week fending off attacks from both its software competitors and the U.S. federal judge as it wrapped up its defence in the Department of Justice's antitrust case.
