At least one of the nine states suing Microsoft for antitrust violations, Massachusetts, is leaning toward appealing a judge's rejection of their proposed harsh sanctions in favor of a more lenient settlement, say people familiar with the matter. Massachusetts officials could still change course by Monday, the deadline for states to notify the court if they intend to appeal. But Massachusetts officials recently told officials of the other states that they stand ready to appeal -- alone if they must.
The states are divided. Some say Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's Nov. 1 ruling does nothing to pry open the personal computer operating system market to competition. They might join an appeal. Others, pressed by tight state budgets, are reluctant to fund a long-shot appeal and would rather put resources into monitoring Microsoft's settlement compliance.
Windows XP has been on the market for a year now, so naturally everyone is clamoring for details on the next version of the world's most popular operating system -- or so Microsoft Corp. hopes. Details are dribbling out, but Microsoft won't say a word on the record, declining to comment for this story. Analysts and software developers haven't been briefed, either.
The next version of the world's most popular desktop operating system, code-named "Longhorn," is due out in test form next year and in final form in 2004. It will have a new look and feel, very different from Windows XP's. Its guts will also be radically different from Windows XP's, because they're based on XML -- extensible markup language, the emerging lingua franca of the Internet. And it will be the first version that won't function fully without new hardware.
"With the possible exception of Windows NT, which was a change from the ground up, this could be the biggest change ever" to Windows, said Giga analyst Rob Enderle.
Move over Microsoft, there's a new security punching bag in town: open source software. Security consultants at Aberdeen Group examined security advisories published by the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) through October of this year. They found that nearly half of the advisories -- 16 of 29 -- affected open source software, including Linux products. Unix systems likewise were affected by 16 of the vulnerabilities for which CERT issued advisories, while only seven of them affected Microsoft products.
The CERT Coordination Center is widely recognized as a center of security expertise, and many organizations rely on its notifications of security incidents and advisories. CERT/CC issues incident notes when it receives reports from organizations that are hit with a particular virus, worm or other threat. An advisory is issued to alert users to vulnerabilities in various systems that make those systems susceptible to security breaches.
When Microsoft released Windows XP, most of the clients I consulted weren't ready to care--many had just finished working out the kinks in Windows 2000. Then Microsoft's new licensing program met with protest. But you'd be wrong to write off XP. One year later, it's time to give XP its due.
Redmond's new licensing scheme that pushes pre-arranged sales commitments may be shoddy, but the bottom line is that XP, although it's an incremental OS upgrade, has a number of new features that are very attractive to systems managers, especially now. But after the backlash over the new licensing, many folks were left with some misconceptions about XP, both financial and technical.
First, let's dispel some myths about the licensing scheme. At a recent conference, a client told me that buying XP forced customers to commit to a new OS upgrade every two years. Not true. All the licensing does is limit enterprise-level discounts to a two-year window. Even then, you don't have to upgrade all the initially purchased software to get the discount.
Microsoft Corp. has hired a European Commission official to whom competitors said they provided confidential arguments and evidence for the commission's antitrust case against the world's largest software maker. Eckert sent a memo to the commission stating he will "fully comply" with conflict-of-interest rules not to reveal confidential commission information to Microsoft, Haugaard said. He pledged not to carry out EU-related work or to lobby the commission for Microsoft.
Microsoft spokeswoman Tiffany Steckler said Eckert, who will join the company Monday, will be responsible for the "trustworthy computing" initiative aimed at developing more secure computer platforms.
The U.S. Defense Department should think twice before embracing open-source software, a trade association is advising. The Initiative for Software Choice, which counts Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Intel among its backers, said in comments filed Tuesday that the department should "avoid crafting needless and potentially detrimental IT policy to promote the use" of open-source software. "Open source" means every software developer can view the source code for software, modify it, and use it for free.
RealNetworks is working on a new patch to address flaws in its popular media player software after the developer who discovered the problems said the original fix doesn't work. The vulnerabilities, which appear in the streaming media company's RealOne Player and Real Player, could affect as many as 115 million users of the software worldwide. The three flaws could result in what's known as a "buffer overflow," a memory problem that could compromise security controls and theoretically allow an attacker to take control of a PC running the Real media player. The intruder could exploit the security holes by encouraging unsuspecting PC users to download files with overly long file names or other distorted features, according to NGSSoftware, the security company that first discovered the flaws.
Microsoft unveiled a minor upgrade this week to its Microsoft Solution for Intranets (MSI) package that offers consulting on setting up enterprise intranets based on Microsoft technologies. The new 1.5 version of MSI also integrates an upcoming technology offering from Groove Networks that provides users with a way to work on MSI-based collaboration projects while offline or outside the firewall.
MSI is a set of consulting services and documentation introduced a year ago to help customers implement intranets using SharePoint Portal Server, SharePoint Team Services, Office XP, SQL Server, Windows 2000 and Windows Media technologies. Microsoft Consulting Services offers MSI in four basic pacakges. Avanade, Hewlett-Packard and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young also offer MSI-based consulting.
Maybe I'll just start reporting every non-Microsoft security flaw to make a point. No, that would get tiring. Or maybe I'll write about how Apple only patches security flaws in its monthly security updates to OS X, often leaving well-known UNIX flaws open for weeks at a time. Nah. Instead, this week I'll present my "Non-Microsoft Security Flaw of the Week," (passing fancy or start of a trend, who can say?) a wonderful little dollop of insecurity in an insecure world, brought to us by RealNetworks (which, incidentally, is run by an ex-Microsoft executive. Hmm...). It seems that RealNetworks' RealONE and RealPlayer 8 software include three security flaws, which the company attempted to fix last week. But the fix... well, the fix doesn't quite fix anything. And hackers privy to the problem can make just subtle modifications to pre-existing attacks and use the flaws to take control of people's computers. Now that's the kind of power I only expect from Microsoft security vulnerabilities. Go Real!
Microsoft's wireless traffic-jam alerts are a little tricky to personalize, but the benefits make that initial effort well worthwhile. Traffic in Los Angeles is sort of like your least favorite relative at a holiday get-together -- always annoying and always there. I've been on the freeway at midnight on Saturday, stuck in traffic that I would normally expect to see only during Friday-afternoon rush hour. And the folks at my local news-radio stations aren't much help. They update the traffic scene every 10 minutes, but they rarely have enough time to report on all the worst tie-ups.
Microsoft has come to the rescue with a series of upgrades to its MSN Autos site, which hosts one of Redmond's earliest forays into Web services. Its My Car service offers real-time traffic alerts for 65 major cities, delivered via text message to any mobile phone, pager, or PDA.