News


Gates to Congress: Improve Math, Science Education

Microsoft chairman implored Congress and the President to "act decisively" to ensure that the country maintain global leadership in technology innovation.

Microsoft's Open Spec Is Bad for GPL, Law Group Says

The Software Freedom Law Center, which provides legal representation "to protect and advance free and open source software," has issued an analysis of Microsoft's "Open Specification Promise" and its compatibility with the GNU General Public License.

Windows Home Server Data Corruption Fix Coming in June

A Windows Home Server bug that's corrupting some users' data won't be fixed until June, Microsoft announced this week.

Idera Keeps Dynamics Data Locked Down

SQL tools developer Idera now has a version of its SQL backup and recovery software that keeps Microsoft Dynamics data secured.

IBM Unveils 'Secure Mashups'

IBM today described a new "secure mashup" technology for the enterprise that is designed to make it easier for nontechnical users to create Web applications from multiple sources.

Report: Yahoo and Microsoft in 'Informal Talks' About Merger

CNET is reporting this morning that Microsoft and Yahoo are now talking, at least informally, about the merger. CNET reporter Dawn Kawamoto cites an unnamed source for the information. "Yahoo has shown some willingness to have a conversation and talk," the source said.

Mono Project To Release Dev Tool and New Beta

Novell, a sponsor of the open source Mono project, issued an announcement today that a new development tool, called MonoDevelop 1.0, will be available for download at the end of this week.

Network Time Protocol Updated for Improved Granularity, IPv6

Internet Engineer Task Force engineers are sharpening the Network Time Protocol's granularity of time measurements, as well as making the veritable time-synchronization standard compatible with version 6 of the Internet Protocol.

Mobile Routing Protocol Advances

The Naval Research Laboratory researchers are helping develop a set of routing protocols for setting up mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs).

Nortel, Microsoft Add to Joint Unified Communications Line

Yesterday, Nortel and Microsoft jointly announced four new unified communications (UC) products designed to help bring together enterprise voice, data, e-mail and other systems.

Convergence 2008 Highlights Useability and Services

Ease of use was a big emphasis on stage at Convergence 2008, with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer noting the Microsoft Office-like interface of Dynamics products in his keynote address.

NSA Extends Access Control to Network Storage

The National Security Agency is leading an effort to extend its access control work into the arena of network file storage. The effort involves integrating NSA's Flask mandatory access control (MAC) architecture -- now the basis of Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) -- into the Network File System (NFS) protocol widely used for network-attached storage devices.

Microsoft To Acquire Desktop Virt Vendor Kidaro

Microsoft today announced its intent to acquire Kidaro, a Redwood City, Calif.-based provider of enterprise desktop virtualization software.

Murdoch Out; Yahoo Continues Fighting Microsoft

Yahoo just lost another option in its battle to stave off Microsoft's hostile takeover bid.

Lawsuit May Have Driven Vista Virtualization

Court papers suggest that Microsoft's change of heart earlier this year to open up Windows Vista virtualization licensing may have been influenced by litigation.

SaaS on the Rise Among SMBs

The use of software as a service (SaaS) among small-to-medium businesses is on the rise, according to a report by Access Market International Partners (AMI-Partners).

Sun-Microsoft Collab Results in Interop Center

Sun, Microsoft are working together to develop a set of guidelines for implementing Exchange Server 2007 on Sun server and storage hardware.

Patch Tuesday Fixes Critical Excel, Outlook, Web Component and Office Flaws

Microsoft rolled out four "critical" security bulletins -- all with as many as 12 remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, according to security experts.

Open Source Computer Donation Program Aims To Go Nationwide

Ensuring that schools in low-income communities have access to the same technologies as wealthier schools isn't enough for James Burgett, executive director of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center in Northern California. He wants them to have better technology, and he wants them to have it for free.

Novell VP Openly Laments Microsoft Deal

According to IDG news service, Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza publicly decried his company's patent licensing deal with Microsoft at Redmond's MIX08 conference last week in Las Vegas.