Cash registers are ringing in response to unprecedented demand for the much-anticipated Xbox video game system from Microsoft Corp. Thousands of gamers lined up at stores across the country beginning Thursday, Nov. 15, to be among the first to purchase Xbox, resulting in a near sellout in its first day at retail. Early reports also show a huge demand for games and accessories, with most customers leaving stores not only with an Xbox, but with more than three games and accessories. Top-selling games include "Halo," "Project Gotham Racing," "NFL Fever 2002" and "Oddworld: Munch's OddyseeT" from Microsoft Game Studios; "Madden NFL 2002" from Electronic Arts; and Tecmo's "Dead or Alive 3," an Xbox exclusive.
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The aim of the Microsoft Security Tool Kit is to help customers protect their systems from common and dangerous threats that they are likely to encounter on the Internet. The Security Tool Kit includes tools that provide a baseline level of security for servers that are connected to the Internet. It also includes security patches for vulnerabilities that the Microsoft Security Response Center has determined to be of potentially high severity for systems that are connected to the Internet.
Customers who are concerned about the threat from users internal to their organization - users who may be "inside" the organization's firewall - will need to take additional steps in configuring their systems and might need to install additional security patches. Such organizations' choices will be guided by their own security policies.
William Neukom, Microsoft's general counsel and head of government affairs, will retire after 22 years with the software giant, Microsoft announced Wednesday. Neukom, 60, in recent years emerged as one of the key players in Microsoft's antitrust battle with the Justice Department and numerous states. Brad Smith, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, will succeed Neukom. Smith had been in the deputy position for five years.
Neukom said he felt comfortable leaving "this amazing client" now because of the strength of the legal team in place. In terms of the timing of the announcement, "We're in the midst of a strong product cycle, and we have made good progress in other strategic areas," he said in an interview with CNET News.com. "The planning for the new fiscal year starts in about two months, and I thought to do it in the most professional and productive way requires some lead time."
While Windows XP has enjoyed retail sales slightly under that of Windows 98, beta testers who contributed to the overall success of the product have yet to receive their own complimentary copies. Communication ceased following XP's release to manufacturing when the closure of newsgroup discussion boards left testers in the dark. BetaNews was told that Windows XP test sites will be notified of the delay, and given an approximate ship date - although testers have indicated that no such announcement has been made to date.
According to Microsoft, sales are exceeding the initial sales of Windows 95 and Windows Millennium Edition. NPD Intelect reported that retailers surveyed during the first week of sales did not expect to see a recurrence of Windows 98's success. At the Windows XP launch event, Microsoft's Jim Allchin indicated that this success was due in part to the company's pool of beta testers while thanking them for their hard work.
Smart MS :) always one step ahead
A proposed settlement agreement in a series of antitrust suits may not only give Microsoft a fairly inexpensive legal resolution, it may also help the company and its PC allies further erode Apple Computer's position in education.
Under a settlement proposal in a series of private antitrust lawsuits announced Tuesday, Microsoft agreed to donate approximately $500 million to help bring technology to some of the nation's most disadvantaged schools. The deal will also allow these schools to obtain a virtually unlimited supply of Microsoft software for the next five years.
The software giant Microsoft will have a chance to respond to the European Commission's antitrust concerns at a hearing here on Dec. 20 and 21, European Union Competition Chief Mario Monti said Wednesday.
The commission said in August it was investigating whether Microsoft was trying to damage rivals by embedding its proprietary audio and video software, Media Player, into its Windows operating system.
The commission--the executive arm of the EU--is also looking at whether Microsoft designed its Windows 2000 operating system to work better with its own servers than those of rivals. Monti said Microsoft had replied last week to the commission's statement of objections setting out its concerns.
All over the high-tech industries, a looming recession and a collapse in stock prices have forced companies to cut spending, lay off workers and slow product development and sales efforts. For Microsoft Corp., that means it is time to wrest important new markets from its weakened rivals. At the top of its target list: software for hand-held computers, online services and servers.
These days, however, Microsoft has two things going for it in corporate-computing markets: new products and newly cost-obsessed U.S. companies. Microsoft last year rolled out its more dependable Windows 2000 operating system, a version of which powers most of the company's Web and back-office servers. Corporate technology officials say the products are much more dependable than Microsoft's previous offerings, making them competitive with Sun, Oracle and IBM for some tasks.
Law enforcement officials on Friday announced the largest seizure of counterfeit software in U.S. history, a shipping container of cleverly faked copies of Microsoft's flagship Windows programs - valued at $100 million.
Federal investigators and police said a well-funded syndicate operating in Taiwan and the Los Angeles area had tried to ship the pirated software here by bribing an undercover agent posing as a U.S. Customs Service official.
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Utilize visual inheritance to speed up UI development and increase developer productivity with Visual Studio.NET. Long a recognized forté of Microsoft developer tools, rapid application development (RAD) in the Microsoft world just added a potent weapon to its arsenal, visual inheritance. Visual inheritance is more than a trivial variation on the object-oriented idea of inheritance. In a .NET development world, it can support many avenues of increased productivity, even for the one-man development shop.
Microsoft once again may have snatched a victory at the settlement table that it might not have been able to achieve in the courtroom.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has cut a deal that would dismiss more than 100 pending private antitrust cases against the company. Lawyers brought the majority of the cases last year after a federal judge ruled that Microsoft had violated two sections of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act.
If approved by a federal judge in Baltimore, the agreement could help Microsoft increase its presence in schools, where rival Apple Computer is the market-share leader. Under proposed terms of the settlement, Microsoft would donate reconditioned computers, software, services and training valued at over $1 billion to 14 percent of the nation's poorest schools, said sources familiar with the agreement.