A United Nations project that uses XML to give small and medium-size companies an alternative to paper forms when doing business across borders has won support from Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash., software maker at a UN conference in Geneva on Thursday demonstrated how the product of the XML project called UNeDocs would work in Microsoft's InfoPath application. Details of the prototype InfoPath implementation will be released within 30 days, Microsoft said.
UNeDocs, or United Nations extensions for aligned electronic trade documents, was started in 2002 by the UN's Economic Commission for Europe. The aim is to use XML to create an electronic equivalent for paper trade documents based on existing EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standards, according to the UNeDocs Web site.
Intel demonstrated its next-generation desktop and notebook processors before a crowd of analysts and media here at its spring analyst event Thursday, and discussed its strategies for bringing Intel silicon into a majority of the world's computers and communications devices.
Intel CEO Craig Barrett and president and COO Paul Otellini joined forces on stage at the Equitable Center Auditorium in midtown Manhattan to demonstrating "Prescott" and "Dothan," the next-generation desktop and notebook processors, on the PC game Neverwinter Nights. Otellini and Barrett teamed up against four large monsters; Barrett claimed credit for most of the slaying.
Accused of violating U.S. export controls, Sun Microsystems Inc. is trying to negotiate a settlement with a U.S. government agency, it reported Wednesday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sun is in talks with the Office of Export Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), it said.
The bureau wrote to Sun in February 2002, charging that sales in Egypt in 1998 and to a reseller in Hong Kong in 1997 for subsequent resale to China violated U.S. export control regulations. It wrote to Sun again in April this year, documenting 19 additional charges, the company said in its Form 10-Q filing.
Microsoft on Thursday released a version of its MSN Internet service for the Mac OS X operating system as the software giant scrambles to address the declining market for dial-up access.
MSN for Mac OS X marks the first time that the software giant has created a form of its Internet service for that version of the Apple Computer operating system, according to Microsoft. The new software contains features similar to its most recent version of MSN 8, which includes a customizable user interface and popular tools such as a Web browser, e-mail and instant messenger.
Like its Windows sibling, MSN for Mac OS X will be sold with dial-up Internet access for $21.95 a month, or without that access for $9.95 a month.
The so-called "Buffalo Spammer" was arrested this week in New York following a year of investigative work by Earthlink's anti-fraud department and law enforcement. Like many spammers, the Buffalo Spammer sent millions of unsolicited emails, or spam, to unsuspecting users, offering them a variety of bogus deals, including cars, free money, 716 area codes, and the like. But it wasn't the email offers that finally got the Buffalo Spammer in trouble. Instead, prosecutors in New York say the 36 year-old-man used false identities to illegally set up Earthlink email accounts using stolen credit cards. So he's been charged with forgery and identity theft, because New York has yet to criminalize spam, as some other states have done.
In a bid to outdo rivals from the cable industry, Verizon announced this morning a "broadband big bang," in which the communications giant is significantly cutting the price of its DSL-based broadband offerings while doubling the download speeds for many customers and offering Microsoft's MSN 8 service. The changes will affects tens of millions of American consumers and, hopefully, jumpstart the adoption of high speed Internet access. In a related move, Verizon announced that it will activate the first 150 of a planned 1000 Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide, by retrofitting surplus pay phones (put out of commission by the proliferation of cell phones) into Wi-Fi signal boosters. The first Wi-Fi hotspots are in New York City; the company will roll out similar services in other US cities later this year.
Security experts Thursday warned of a vulnerability in the Linux Kernel 2.4 branch, which can be exploited to cause denial-of-service (define) attacks. The hole in the popular open-source operating system was detected in the way the Linux Kernel handles caching of routing information.
"By flooding a Linux system with packets with spoofed source addresses, the handling of the cache will consume large amounts of CPU power. This could potentially bring a Linux system offline with a rate of only 400 packets per second by using carefully chosen source addresses that causes hash collisions in the table," according to an security advisory from U.K.-based Secunia.
The European Commission is considering whether to order Microsoft to hand over internal memos revealed in the International Herald Tribune and New York Times newspapers that describe sales practices the European regulator suspects may break its antitrust rules, people close to the Commission said Thursday.
The sister newspapers reported that Microsoft's top salesman, Orlando Ayala, last July circulated a confidential memo to senior executives of the company around the world laying out a strategy to offer big discounts to governments and institutions, and in some cases to offer the company's software for free.
Ditto send me some important info that will effect all beta testers of Office 11 Beta 2 Technical Refresh. It appears that to be able to run Office 11 Beta 2 Technical Refresh, all beta testers will be required to install an updated build of Windows Server 2003. Which can prove to be inconvenient. The email reads...
As you may recall, we recently sent an email letting you know that there will be a Beta 2 Technical Refresh build available to you later this quarter. If you have been beta testing either SharePoint Portal Server or Windows SharePoint Services (formerly SharePoint Team Services) on servers in your own environment, be aware that the Beta 2 Technical Refresh for these products will require an updated build of Windows Server 2003. The Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit is now available for you to download (or you may order an evaluation CD) from the following location.
Microsoft has a strategy to discount its products heavily when the software giant competes for orders against the emerging license-free Linux operating system, the International Herald Tribune newspaper said on Thursday. The newspaper said that according to internal Microsoft emails it obtained, Microsoft's chief sales executive Orlando Ayala authorized executives to offer steep discounts.
"Under NO circumstances lose against Linux," Ayala was quoted saying by the newspaper, adding the discounts could be paid for by a special fund.
Microsoft is the dominant operating software on desktop computers around the world, while it is pushing into the market for more powerful and expensive computers. A range of Microsoft rivals are promoting Linux as a cheap alternative to Microsoft's Windows.