WinInsider

Microsoft somehow landed at number seven on Forbes' list of most admired companies, just ahead of Fed-Ex (no. 8) Starbucks (no. 9). Wal-Mart topped the list this year, followed by Southwest Airlines, Berkshire Hathaway, Dell Computer, General Electric, and Johnson & Johnson. Interestingly, chipmaker Intel was bounced off the list this year because of the PC sales slump, though that doesn't really explain Dell and Microsoft being in the top ten, the only PC-related companies near the top of the list.

Microsoft unveiled on Friday its plan for integrating digital-rights management technology throughout its product lines. Next week, the Redmond software vendor plans to make a closed technical beta of its Windows Rights Management Services (WRMS) server available to selected testers. WRMS, formerly code-named "Tungsten," will be a server that will layer on top of Windows Server 2003, and later, be bundled directly into future versions of Windows on the desktop and server.

Microsoft has turned to academia to help guide its year-old Trustworthy Computing initiative, forming an academic advisory board to review the company's security and privacy initiatives.

The Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board is made up of 14 experts in computer security and software development culled from top universities around the world including Stanford, Cornell, and Carnegie Mellon in the U.S., as well the University of London in the U.K. and the University of Milan in Italy, according to a statement released by the company.

Inktomi has lengthened its arrangement to provide search results for Microsoft's MSN Web portal, quashing speculation that the software giant would scrap the deal out of competitive concerns. Earlier in February, Microsoft extended its agreement for Inktomi to provide Web search services through December 2005, according to a Feb. 14 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. The filing added that MSN contributed $5.6 million in revenue to Inktomi during the December quarter, $5.1 million of it indirectly through paid inclusion and $500,000 in licensing fees.

Microsoft on Friday announced a new security technology that would allow businesses more control over who accesses documents and information stored on their computers. The Redmond, Wash.-based company plans to release next week a new test version of Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), which works with Windows Server 2003. Microsoft plans to launch a broader test release during the second quarter.

Microsoft has focused this version of the software on securing data stored on corporate portals and intranets. A later release will expand the security mechanism's focus for documents transmitted over the Internet between companies.

It looks like the "rights management technology" that Microsoft has been rumored to be building into Office is on the cusp of debuting in Office 2003. The Windows enthusiasts over at Neowin.Net have the dish on the "Information Rights Management" component of the Office 2003 Beta 2 code that appeared - then disappeared - from the MSDN site this week.

"IRM is a persistent file-level technology from Microsoft that allows the user to specify permission for who can access and use documents or e-mail messages, and helps prevent sensitive information from being printed, forwarded, or copied by unauthorized individuals," according the early Beta 2 text. "Once permission for a document or message has been restricted with this technology, the access and usage restrictions are enforced no matter where the information is."

Security researchers at CERT/CC underscored the importance of a group of newly patched vulnerabilities in Oracle Corp.'s enterprise software, including versions that run on Windows servers. The security flaws affect the Oracle9i Database, release 1 and 2; the Oracle8i Database, version 8.1.7; the Oracle8 Database, version 8.0.6; and the Oracle9i Application Server, releases 9.0.2 and 9.0.3, according to the CERT advisory issued Wednesday.

The worst flaws among the four new buffer overflow vulnerabilities and two vulnerabilities in the application server can allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. All of the flaws were discovered by security researchers at Next Generation Security Software, Ltd., which notified Oracle about the problems back in September.

A deal cinched Wednesday could help Microsoft tackle a long-standing problem: How to sell new software to customers reluctant to give up a 7-year-old version of Windows. Microsoft's acquisition this week of software and related patents from Connectix, a maker of virtual machine software, also gives the company a new weapon for its battle with rivals including Sun Microsystems and Oracle, analysts said Thursday.

Connectix makes software that lets a single computer perform like several independent computers running their own operating systems. It makes client software that permits Windows to run on a Macintosh, and server software that has yet to be released.

Developers and enterprise customers are getting their first glimpse of OneNote, one of two new Office 2003 applications that Microsoft accidentally posted--then quickly removed--from the Web on Wednesday. Microsoft inadvertently released a new test version of OneNote, along with copies of the other new program, InfoPath, and the entire Office 2003 Professional suite.

OneNote differs from Microsoft Word, the company's popular word processing program, in many areas. Most of the major differences have to do with concept rather than the gulf of features between the two products. Microsoft considers OneNote more of a "pre-content" creation tool, where the user takes more charge of how he or she organizes ideas or information, said a Microsoft spokeswoman. Word, by contrast, gives a more rigidly defined "left to right" means of creating documents, she added.

An NEC server with 32 Intel Itanium processors and Microsoft's coming Server 2003 operating system has claimed the No. 2 place in the most widely watched server speed test. The $4.4 million server posted a performance of 433,000 transactions per minute, a result faster than IBM's 32-processor p690, with 428,000 transactions per minute, and Hewlett-Packard's 64-processor Superdome with 423,000. Only Fujitsu's 128-processor Primepower 2000 has a higher result, 456,000. The TPC-C speed test, which simulates sales and inventory transactions on a database server, is the most widely watched measurement of server performance.

"What's impressive is that it's a Windows system, an Itanium system, and it's playing with the big boys," said Gordon Haff, an Illuminata analyst. "It's another proof point among many that Itanium 2 is right up there with (IBM's) Power4."