Oracle's hostile bid for PeopleSoft is currently under review by Canadian antitrust regulators, adding yet another antitrust hurdle for the database-software maker to jump.
The investigation by Canada's Competition Bureau is not a surprise, given the size of the $7.25 billion buyout proposal and Oracle's large presence in Canada--it has 13 offices and more than 1,000 employees. But it means the software maker has to get approval from yet another regulatory agency. It already faces examination from the U.S. Department of Justice, a large group of state attorneys general and the European Union.
From Ditto...
Windows Installer v3.0 (MSI 3.0) is targeted at making servicing better - this includes authoring, creating, distributing and managing updates to applications. The goal of the MSI 3.0 Beta program are: to solicit feedback on the new feature set ensure application compatibility in the final release by exposing MSI 3.0 to a wide variety of MSI files and installation scenarios allow developers to evaluate and begin to plan for features available in the final release of MSI 3.0. To register for the Windows Installer Beta Program: Navigate to the site: http://www.betaplace.com
Use the Guest ID: MSI30
Complete the Windows Installer Nomination Survey Form to register as a tester
for the Windows Installer Beta program.
Seven video game companies, including Microsoft, Eidos and Ubi Soft Entertainment, have qualified to bid in the auction for the assets of bankrupt publisher 3DO, according to court papers filed on Thursday. Microsoft entered the console games business two years ago with its Xbox console, though it was in the PC games business for years beforehand.
According to the court order approving the sales procedures, bidders were required to place deposits of anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 to bid on the various asset groups, including the in-progress games "Street Racing Syndicate" and "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." Bidders interested in all of the assets as a group were required to deposit $250,000.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser relied upon a "revolutionary" invention by University of California researchers, a lawyer for Eolas Technologies Inc. told jurors yesterday in closing arguments in a lawsuit in federal court in Chicago.
But Redmond-based Microsoft said the invention didn't work and rejected claims that it infringed patents for a method of allowing an Internet browser to access interactive software programs. Microsoft argued that the technology used in its Web browser is fundamentally different from Eolas' patented invention.
Microsoft hopes to turn up the heat on its Java rivals with plans for new software that could simplify the creation of heavy-duty Web services applications. The software, code-named Indigo, is the next generation of Microsoft's .NET Web services product. The company is expected to disclose more details at its Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles in October.
While Microsoft executives have offered scant information on Indigo, people familiar with the company's plans said the software takes direct aim at IBM, Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, Oracle and other rivals that sell products based on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standard.
Stratus Technologies, maker of fault-tolerant Windows 2000 servers, is claiming its internal monitoring of more than 1,200 live customer units approached six nines of availability over the last six months. If true, the mark would signal an impressive level of scalability for the systems, which are based on industry-standard server components and Windows.
The 99.9998 percent uptime that Stratus says its systems achieved over the last six months translates to less than a minute of unplanned downtime for a server running 24x7 for one year. By comparison, reliable estimates for the uptime of Windows-based clusters are in the 99.9 percent uptime range -- about 8.5 hours of unplanned downtime over a year of non-stop operation.
Microsoft has posted the bits for its stand-alone Active Directory, an out-of-band component of Windows Server 2003 that greatly expands the flexibility of Microsoft's directory services. Active Directory in Application Mode, or AD/AM, unties Active Directory from the server operating system and the domain structure -- addressing one of the big criticisms of Active Directory in the Windows 2000 release.
Key differences between AD/AM and the regular Active Directory are that AD/AM runs as an independent service instead of an operating system service, it is not required to run on a domain controller, it can be run in multiple instances on a single server and it will run on Windows XP for development and testing purposes.
The price difference between extremely high-end Windows-based systems and extremely high-end Unix-based systems isn't as close as a recent Transaction Processing Performance Council TPC-C benchmark implies.
Since the server is the same, this is a pretty good one-to-one comparison of a Microsoft stack versus an HP-UX/Oracle stack on performance and price, right? Not so fast. For one thing, HP splurged on higher-end storage and used HP-UX/PA-RISC servers as clients, adding significant expense to its configuration. It's unclear what effect that had on performance, but it definitely lifted the cost of the total configuration for HP and Oracle by about $1 million.
Microsoft recently released Money 2004, the latest version of the financial software I've been using for a couple of years, mostly because of its easy link to my Pocket PC device. The fact that I rarely use the PDA version of Money is beside the point. It's the concept of mobile financial management that counts, don't you know?
Though I don't get as much out of Money as I could, it has helped me organize my finances better than before I started using it. If you're not managing your finances electronically or paying bills online, MS Money 2004 would be a great app to start with. For those who already use personal finance software, the new Money could be worth it just for all the free services that come with it (more on that later).
When it comes to desktop computing and ease of use, no company comes to mind more quickly than Sun Microsystems, right? Right? Hello? Is this thing on? Anyway, Sun is hell-bent on creating a low-cost alternative to the Windows desktop, and its solution, appropriately enough, is dubbed Mad Hatter. Basically, it consists of Linux, the GNOME user interface, Sun's StarOffice product suite, Ximian Evolution email, Mozilla Calendar, and the GAIM instant messaging application, Sun says, and the company promises interoperability with Microsoft Office and Exchange Server, and Lotus Notes. Sun claims the total cost of ownership (TCO) of its system will be just 80 to 90 percent of the Microsoft solution, but shouldn't it be far less? Sun is vague on the details of the system--like actual pricing and release date--but it should be an interesting development to watch. You know, as it dies an ignominious death ala the Network Computer, the 3COM Audrey, and any other piece of unnecessary technology you can think of.