News


Judge Upholds Antitrust Settlement Agreement

The long-awaited ruling in the settlement phase of the Microsoft antitrust case is in. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved the terms of the settlement Microsoft agreed to with the Department of Justice and the nine states a year ago.

Certified Mail

Licensing confusion, and more salary survey feedback.

CA Unwraps New ARCServe for Backup

Computer Associates Int’l Inc. (CA) this week announced version 9 of BrightStor ARCServe Backup. CA bills ARCServe 9 as a significant redesign of its flagship backup product for Windows, Linux and NetWare.

Microsoft Reports Critical Vulnerability in Windows 2000, XP

The flaw results from an unchecked buffer in Microsoft's PPTP implementation. The bulletin was one of three security bulletins released by Microsoft's security team on Thursday. The other newly patched vulnerabilities involve Internet Information Server and Windows 2000.

Microsoft Offers HIPAA Help in New BizTalk Accelerator

Microsoft will offer a revamped version of its healthcare industry extension to Microsoft BizTalk Server, the BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA, on Dec. 1.

Study: IT Delayed After 9/11, But Will Still Make Major Security Purchases

It was popular wisdom after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 that Corporate America would wake up to its vulnerability and quickly spend additional billions on security and business continuity solutions, products and services.

Office 11 Beta Runs Only on Windows XP, Windows 2000

The beta version of Office 11 Microsoft released last week will only run on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Microsoft officials say there has not been a final decision on whether to freeze out Windows 9x and Windows ME users from the final version of the Office suite, which is scheduled to ship in mid-2003.

Windows 2000 Achieves Common Criteria Security Certification

Windows 2000 received the Common Criteria security certification on Tuesday after Microsoft invested millions of dollars and three years of effort to gain the certification.

Unisys Serves up Pre-Configured Database Bundles

Unisys Corp. on Monday introduced several pre-configured database bundles that it says will enable customers to rapidly deploy and support large database environments. The new systems, which feature Microsoft’s Windows 2000 Datacenter Server hosted on Unisys’ Intel-based ES7000 servers, are also outfitted with SQL Server 2000 and matched with storage capacity from EMC Corp.

Intel Still Talking About InfiniBand

Intel was one of the loudest, largest and most active early backers of InfiniBand. That's why the chip giant's decision over the summer to discontinue work on hardware products involving the fledgling server interconnect technology was widely viewed as a very bad sign for InfiniBand.

DDoS Attacks in the Crosshairs

The massive Distributed Denial of Service attack earlier this week against the backbone of the Internet has created a classic game of "Is the glass half empty or half full?"

IDC: Full-Fledged Web Services at Least a Decade Away

Analysts at market research house IDC are throwing cold water on the idea that the revolutionary phase of Web services -- delivering software as services -- will take hold soon. According to IDC, that development is at least 10 years away.

Security Firm Finds 9 IE Flaws

An Israeli security firm, GreyMagic Software, documented nine new vulnerabilities in recent versions of Internet Explorer, eight of which the firm calls "critical."

SP1 for Windows XP Embedded Ships

Microsoft updated the componentized version of Windows XP this week with the delivery of Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 1. The SP1 release brings expanded foreign-language support, the Microsoft .NET Framework, remote boot and diskless operation.

First Beta Ships for Office 11

Microsoft's Office 11, which will include a major overhaul of the Outlook e-mail client and XML integration across the product line, went into its first beta testing phase this week.

Stratus Makes 100% Windows Uptime Guarantee

Stratus Technologies upped the ante on uptime guarantees this week with an offer promising 100 percent uptime on Windows servers.

Microsoft: Servers, XP Growing Revenues

Microsoft used its recent financial earnings report to highlight momentum in its server and business products. Strong performers, according to the company, included SQL Server Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP Professional.

Unisys Runs Itanium 2 on Industry Standard Benchmark

Unisys ran its first TPC benchmark with one of its 16-processor, Windows-optimized systems using the 64-bit Itanium 2 processor.

IDC Sees Turnaround in Server Spending

IDC forecasts that in the third quarter of 2002 the standard Intel architecture server market will show growth for the first time since the beginning of 2001. Don't get too excited, the market research firm warns. After the awful first half of 2002, worldwide server sales should still be down 9 percent in 2002 compared to 2001.

Microsoft Issues 3 Patches, 1 Fixes Critical SQL Flaw

Microsoft released three security bulletins late Wednesday, including one with a patch for a critical flaw in its SQL Server database. The other two bulletins included patches for moderate threats to the Windows XP Help and Support Center and to a seldom-used feature of Word and Excel. The flurry of security bulletins takes Microsoft to 61 bulletins so far in 2002, one more than the software giant issued for all of 2001.