Web researchers at Netcraft Ltd. say Windows 2000 crossed the threshold of 1 million IP addresses in March. Together with Windows NT 4.0 and Windows Server 2003, there are slightly over 1.5 million IP addresses running Microsoft operating systems, according to Netcraft. Each month, Netcraft performs a survey of sites on the Web. Windows 2000/IIS 5.0 are up from less than 700,000 IP addresses in February 2002, according to a chart on the Netcraft site.
Normally, the U.K.-based outfit reports an operating system's or Web server's presence by the number of sites, of which Windows 2000 now has about 9 million. The 10.75 million total Microsoft-based sites Netcraft found across the Web in March 2003 made up about 27 percent of all sites. The open source Apache Web server still dominates, with 63 percent, or nearly 24.5 million sites.
In a keynote speech Tuesday at the Voice on the Net conference here, Microsoft executive Peyton Smith outlined the ways a corporation's phone system and computer system will operate under one common network. Central to this trend will be the adoption of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is designed to enable companies to operate voice, data, video and messaging through a single system. "SIP changes everything," Smith, the general manager of Microsoft's embedded systems group, said. SIP is "the disruptive technology that ushers this convergence in."
"Better working through XML" is the prevailing theme for Microsoft Corp.'s forthcoming Office 2003 productivity suite, and none of its components carries this banner more prominently than InfoPath, a new application for designing and filling out XML-based forms.
eWeek Labs' tests of InfoPath Beta 2 showed that, unlike its other Office siblings, this application eschews binary file formats altogether, instead storing form data in simple XML files, which derive their structure, appearance and validation from templates also written in XML.
After long and exhausted consideration, I have decided to shutdown operation permanently. I have come to this conclusion hesitantly, to say the least. There are numerous reasons that compounded for me to reach this decision. But mostly because I don't have so much time as I use to have, and now a days the Lunix and Java crowd is pissing me off to the point that I can't stand reading any more news year after year, for the past 7 years, how they will "conquer the desktop" every year, but never do.
Farewell, dear readers :)
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A recent survey by Forrester Research brings an ugly truth to the forefront: The majority of IT administrators currently working with Microsoft products do not trust the company or believe it can produce secure software. The survey cites some interesting statistics. 77 percent of those polled--all of whom are security experts $1 billion companies--said they do not trust Microsoft, and yet 9 out of 10 still deploy Microsoft software in mission-critical applications. If ever there was news that should bolster competitors such as Linux, this is it. But the question remains: What can Microsoft do to reverse this trend, and how long will it be before the company's fortunes reflect the growing unease in the industry about the quality of its wares?
The court will hear the appeal of the ruling of U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in the Microsoft case, but his wife, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz-who sits on the Richmond, Va.-based appeals court bench-will recuse herself, say court officials. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a member of the Fourth Circuit, will not sit for the Microsoft appeal because she routinely recuses herself from hearing appeals of rulings made by her husband.
Microsoft's attorneys maintain that Sun is already largely successful with Java in the server and devices spaces and that the company is looking for the court to do what it has been unwilling to do to build its presence in the desktop space.
David Tulchin, an attorney for Microsoft, introduced evidence that a Sun employee had devised a plan for Sun to gain distribution for Java first on 70 percent of the PC market, and then on 95 percent, but that the company did not want to pay the $4 million a year it would take to do so.
Meanwhile, despite the appeal, Microsoft is fueled by rulings in the landmark government case against it, where U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did not accept recommendations that Microsoft should be forced to distribute Sun's technology.
Microsoft seems to have learned a lesson from decision to remove ".Net" from the Windows Server 2003 name: Don't invite publicity around an acknowledgement that your publicity crew went overboard. As a result, the software giant is continuing its drive to clarify and trim back its .Net naming convention. But rather than doing so with a lot of fanfare, Microsoft is reducing quietly its use of the term. Earlier this month, Microsoft changed the name of MapPoint. The first of Microsoft's XML Web services is now known as plain-old MapPoint, rather than MapPoint.Net.
Microsoft on Monday went public with its "Empower" partner program, aimed at recruiting more independent software vendors into the Microsoft fold. Microsoft foreshadowed its Empower campaign at its recent Convergence customer and partner conference in Orlando. At the show, Microsoft executives said they have embarked on campaigns aimed at recruiting new ISVs and gathering feedback from existing ones.
On Monday, Microsoft posted to its Web site a list of participant requirements and benefits for the new program. Based on this list, it seems Microsoft is using the program to attract newer and vendors who aren't yet Microsoft partners to employ and integrate more of Microsoft's technologies.
The war in Iraq may delay the technology sector's rebound by slowing international business communication and prolonging investors' confidence crisis, the head of a European technology institute said on Monday. Francis Lorentz, president of the Paris-based European audio-visual and technology institute (IDATE), said the war was a concern for an industry which after nearly three years of decline was putting its house in order and forecasting a possible return to growth next year.
But with the U.S.-led war in Iraq nearly two weeks old, worries are growing about the consequences for the technology sector if the campaign turns out more difficult than expected. "There is inevitably an impact because...if business slows down, especially at the international level, that will be seen in the level of communication, notably in the communication of data, not just voice, and therefore it will have an impact on growth," Lorentz told Reuters in an interview.
Opponents of the war have won a BBC News Online debate, with a big majority backing the motion that war with Iraq is wrong. An invited group of BBC News Online readers took part in the live online debate, responding to the motion: "Going to war with Iraq was the wrong thing to do."
After the close of discussion, all users were invited to have their say by agreeing or disagreeing with the motion. More than 8,000 took part, with the result that 78% agreed with the motion and 22% disagreed.