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Sarah, 15, from Lincolnshire went to meet the richest man in the world, Microsoft boss Bill Gates. Here's what he had to say:
Sarah: What is it like to be called the richest man in the world?
Bill: I'm surprised whenever I hear that! What it really means for me is that I have a lot of resources to give back to my Foundation and hopefully do a lot of good things because of that.
Sarah: Your company is now a household name but some people claim you have a monopoly on the IT industry. How do you react to that?
Bill: Well Microsoft has had its success by doing low-cost products and constantly improving those products and we've really redefined the IT industry to be something that's about a tool for individuals. So we're proud of what we've done. We need to keep doing even better to maintain the leadership position we've got.
More on at Bill Gates: 'My computer crashes too'
Aiming to push its Windows Media technology deeper into consumer electronics, Microsoft plans to announce Tuesday that the audio and video formats soon will be supported by several DVD chipmakers. The move will pave the way for DVD players that can play back 22 hours of music from a single CD. Microsoft said that, over the next year, chipmakers Cirrus Logic, ESS Technology, LSI Logic, STMicroelectronics and Zoran will add support for Windows Media audio and video. Those chipmakers represent 90 percent of the DVD processors manufactured and shipped last year.
Microsoft on Tuesday took the wraps off "Corona," a new package of digital media products it hopes will help let the Internet deliver theater-quality entertainment to consumers and big profits to content providers. Corona is the code name for a set of applications, including server software, that enables Web sites to "stream," or broadcast, audio and video over the Internet, as well as a new player to receive that content on a PC, Dave Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows digital media division, said in an interview.
I say that Apple has monopoly in classrooms, it needs healthy competition. Now Apple is going tell Microsoft how to spend Microsoft's money.
Microsoft finally got its day in court, but so did rival Apple Computer. For weeks, critics have battered the software titan for a controversial settlement that would give $1 billion in software, money, services and training to needy schools over the course of five years. Critics have charged that the settlement, which would dispatch more than 100 civil antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft, is anti-competitive. But on Monday, Tom Burt, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, offered his defense to Judge J. Frederick Motz in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore.
Microsoft on Monday filed the first of two legal briefs expected this week to address the pair of simultaneous tracks in its landmark antitrust case. The first track, proceeding under the Tunney Act, will wrap up the company's November settlement with the Justice Department and nine of 18 states. Microsoft's three-page filing summarized all communications between the company and federal government employees. Microsoft's document indicates that all communications took place within the context of settlement discussions. The settlement is partway through a 60-day period of public comment.
Microsoft has begun offering cash to people who use its online wallet and identity software, a little-noticed promotion that comes as a rival effort led by some of its bitterest enemies gains momentum. The software giant, which recently said it had $36 billion in cash, will write checks to people who buy $100 or more in goods using Passport Express Purchase. The program will dole out $20 rebates for each $100 spent using the online service, with total rebates capped at $100. "All your purchases at participating merchants count, and the more you spend, the more you get," read a notice on Microsoft's MSN.com portal. "MSN will send you a check for up to $100 after the holidays."
Busted!
Four Israeli teenagers were placed under house arrest on Monday after admitting they wrote and spread the "Goner" worm that wreaked havoc on computers worldwide, police said. Tel Aviv's juvenile court accepted a police request to confine the 15- and 16-year-olds to their houses pending five days of investigation, said Meir Zohar, head of the Israeli police computer crimes squad. Under Israeli law, they would face up to 2-1/2 years in prison for a virus that deleted files and clogged e-mail inboxes around the world, causing millions of dollars in damage.
Microsoft says it is on track to meet its goal for Xbox shipments by the end of the year. The software veteran and hardware neophyte said in a statement late Sunday that it has shipped about 1.1 million Xbox units to retailers since the video game console's Nov. 15 launch. Microsoft added that it expects to ship 300,000 more Xboxes to retailers by the end of the month.
The combined 1.4 million units shipped would fall toward the high end of the range of 1 million to 1.5 million units that the company set for this year. The latest statement continues Microsoft's war of words with Nintendo over whose new game console is the hottest seller this holiday season.
The key to survival in today's economy is faster time to market. Time to market is often a direct function of developer productivity. The Microsoft .NET Framework provides a high-productivity programming model that enables developers to use existing skills and code, and eliminates the integration and maintenance issues some other platforms create. Visual Studio .NET enables developers to choose their most productive programming language and simplifies application development by handling common programming tasks.
eTesting Labs Study Shows Windows Media Player for Windows XP Is Nearly Twice as Fast as Real Jukebox or RealOne For Common Digital Media Tasks. Fastest Full-Featured Player Also Uses Fewer Memory Resources.
Microsoft Corp. today announced results of an independent third-party study from eTesting Labs Inc. showing that the new Windows Media Player for Windows XP is the fastest full-featured media player for common digital media tasks and uses fewer computer memory resources than other players tested. In a testing scenario encompassing starting up the player, initiating MP3 playback and burning six songs onto a CDR using Redbook audio format, Windows Media Player for Windows XP took less than half the time of RealOne and Real Jukebox. The complete test report is available at here.